A Mouth of Ivy
by aragonite
Summary: Lestrade has to go undercover to investigate a very strange sort of Christmas murders. Unfortunately for him, Gregson is helping the investigation. The information about holly-sellers is all too true. Toby Irish is my own creation.
1. Chapter 1

Title: A Mouth of Ivy

Character/Pairings: Lestrade/Gregson friendship (and grudging it is).

Rating: PG

Warnings: Hungry children at Christmas, poverty, destitution. Murders lurking in the background.

Summary: Summary: Mr. Lestrade has to go undercover to investigate a very strange sort of Christmas murders. Unfortunately for him, Gregson is helping the investigation. The information about holly-sellers is all too true. Toby Irish is my own creation.

A/N: This fic turned into a monster, and it is going to be a mini-epic posted to my lj before Christmas. So, without further ado (and realizing I have to let the go for now), I produce the first chapter that started it all. Thanks much to **havlockvetinari** for giving me the challenge fic:

"Granada, ACD or RDJ Holmes. Or any mishmash of the three, providing Lestrade is Granada/ACD!Ferret!Lestrade. (You can probably tell where this request is going.) Super extra bonus points to anyone that can swing The Great Mouse Detective refrences. Lestrade fic. Lestrade/Gregson is my favorite, but him in the middle of a H/W/L would be cool too. Or even Lestrade/Yardie-of-Your-Choice. Can you convince me of Lestrade/Mycroft? Go for it! I just want Lestrade being a BAMF. Love seeing his touch of OCD mentioned, him bickering with Gregson, getting into fights and trouncing guys twice his size because he's vicious and fights like a sewer rat. I like watching the Yardies be competent, not in a 'we don't need Holmes' way, but showing off that they are good cops and have their jobs for a damn reason. I like Lestrade and Gregson showing off why they're "the best of a bad lot". I like watching the Yardies bitch about Mister Holmes.  
On more plotty notes: I adore casefic, especially stuff that requires Lestrade to go undercover, because I think he has a hard time losing himself in it. Involvement of Mycroft and a SuperSekritMission would be loved. History!geek is a history geek and loves incorperation of period events/cases, but it's not required at all because I know it's a pain. While smut is never turned down, plot will be greeted with great squee and need not even include shippyness. I also love character-study stuff, and relationship analysis (why/how things work)and would lovelove something where Gregson and Lestrade have to admit that they're at least friends (in a 'I swear if you die I'll kill you' way) and maybe something more."

**This is what ze doesn't want:** "Het ships of canons (Watson/Mary excepted), watersports, non-con between two canons (so traumatized!past is fine), BBC 'verse."

I hope my little pun about Basil and the mouse will make them happy.

**A Mouth of Ivy**

Even after decades working for the badge, most policemen (either plain-clothed or uniformed) wouldn't doubt the innate goodness that rests inside most people.

They just wish people didn't have to _fight_ so bloody hard for that goodness to get anywhere.

In a city the size of London on the Year of Our Lord, 1880, fighting is the common mathematical denominator.

Christmas in London ironically means more fighting than what would be considered. Money might appear to flow like water for a precious few days or weeks, but the money has to get to the hands first if the holiday is to be paid for. To this end there was more than a bit of creative thinking put to work, and some of that thinking was of the illegal nature. Adding to this change in the usual London scheme is the fact that the already-large city of millions is filled to bursting with the superfluous members of the English population. Relatives may return, but the true influx is in the poor and desperate among the outer-lying areas. Work is a hope to bring the most jaded of mindsets to the dirty streets, and for the most part even a small, menial wage is possible. That it lasts only for a few weeks is unimportant. Work is always needed. Unfortunately, not all forms of work were legal.

Toby Irish felt the chill soak through his cheap shoes into the bones of his feet. The boy stamped hurriedly, and shuddered as he wrapped himself deep within the layers of his battered little coat. Normally he wore the largest-sized clothing that could be had, but that didn't mean much this time of year and until the next week's coal came in, his older sister could use that coat while she tatted her laces. The way things were going, her lace would bring more money in than he would by the coming morn, and the thought depressed him both as a brother and as the standing man of the house.

He was too cold—and anyway, too big—to join the other children shrieking down the streets in their collection of paper-rubbish. Even the ones off barefoot could dodge the traffic and nip around the horses faster than he could today. The sight made him pull a face. It was an expressive face, but he never thought about it. Being dumb meant he had to show what he was thinking and feeling.

It was why he was uneasy about his hopes for work. Strangers needed to be taught his form of language. That took time, time he didn't have. Not only was Christmas coming, but so was the need for money.

He was ten years old this winter…at least he thought that was his age. In the Irish clan, the numbers of coin and fee were important, not the numbers for marking years. He had sisters and a brother still alive, and a mother and uncle but his father's passing left him half-orphaned in more ways than one. His only benefactor was a feared grandmother who had no idea the pence she sent for his schooling went to pay for their rented room by the poultry yards. That 7d a week was going into things that took on urgency with the freezing fogs.

It would have been better, he knew bitterly, if Uncle Winnie hadn't gone back to carving his loaded tatts.1 They could have made _so much money_ off the pheasants…they had every year. But Winnie would be doing his drag in the box past Christmas and all the way through New Year's and probably even Candle-mass too.

The family survived from year to year making do with what they had, but game-poaching was the once-a-year, glorious venture that brought them in just enough to get by and eat as much as they wanted to for the cold months. Toby's father, "Blue Johnson" had been the best in the art, but he was dead and Winnie didn't have the same gift. It made Toby weary to think of it, for he missed their Christmas dinners with always a plum pudding and twice he could remember the luxury of a turkey at the table.

Toby sadly pulled out the small bit of butcher's-paper hiding in his pocket for extra warmth. He'd been carrying it all week, and it was still the same, sobering list as ever:

**Goose club: 4¾ d**

**Plum Pudding Club: 2d**

**Coal: 1/2/2**

The rest of the paper was covered with his many attempts to write off what he had left. The weekly fee for the plum pudding was the first one he could finish, but it made him sick to think the family would sit down at the table and have a pudding without the goose. He knew Mr. Hartwell enough that he knew that a lifetime of supplying the man with illegal pheasant, pigeon, and grouse wasn't enough to call fair if they fell short of the last payment for the goose club by a week. Six bob for the brute, and they were running out of time to buy it.

He wondered if they had trapped themselves by joining the goose club. Pigeons might have been better for the table…there wouldn't have been much meat but his mother made a soup with the birds using potatoes and just a bit of parsley…he gnawed his lip to think of that soup now.

The boy hunched inside his layers of dirty cloth, all the clothing he owned in his name, and took small steps through the patches of ice and frozen garbage that clogged the ways. His shoes were thinned wood and thinner with use; the ice was slowly shaving the bottoms to splinters but the three layers of ratty wool beneath ought to help him until they finally fell through.

Although his belly growled, he ignored it. People went hungry in London to often it wasn't even worth a note. Being tired and cold was more important. Most of his day had been spent trying to run errands for the usual clients who needed a swift boy, but his usual luck was failing him.

It wasn't unexpected. London was crammed to bursting this time of year with people. Even in the feverish heat of the Huntley regattas he wouldn't see as many people on the streets as now. They weren't here just for the Christmas, or to see their families, but to find work.

The wind chopped across the boy's face and he burrowed further down into the remnants of his tattered collar and muffler. Soot-cinders could dig under the eyelids if one wasn't careful, and Toby had no desire to celebrate the holiday with pinkeye. He was forced to stop at a funeral procession crossing the High Street; he waited impatiently as the black-plumed horses finished their jaunt, stamping his feet in place like a trotting horse himself. Sometimes a person had money thrown to the poor on their way to the last resting-place. It was clearly not one of these people.

"Toby Irish why aren't you in school?"

Toby nearly jumped from the shock and half-spun on his slippery heels to find a spectacle looking back at him. The man was average-sized for London, which meant he was smallish-sided with a lean, sallow face framed about two snapping dark eyes. A slick of grease coated every exposed bit of skin against the cold and he wore a brilliant red muffler about his neck, a dark green frock-coat about his shoulders. A battered bowler perched over his dark hair and he wore country-style trousers tucked inside the tops of his boots. None of this was the least bit interesting, however, compared to the man's choice of ornament. A sprig of berried holly depended from his hat-brim, at his exposed tie like a tie-pin, the front pocket of his coat, and even upon his tin watch-chain.

Toby forced himself to recover and managed to shrug. This was how he normally dealt with questions, but the man wasn't fooled.

"Does Mr. Gregson know where you are?"

Toby forgot himself and swallowed hard.

"Toby…" A trail-off and a sigh, a shake of the head was the summary. As Toby watched he leaned backward against a beaten-looking wooden push-cart filled to the brim with holly, and rolled out a cigarette. Toby thought about it, and pulled out the fag-end of his own collection from his sleeve. His companion smoker lifted an eyebrow at the sight of a young boy with the shreds of a Spanish cigar, but permitted the sharing of the match. Man and boy cupped their hands against the fey winds nipping around the corners and puffed until there was no telling if their natural breath or the smoke was the source of the blue-white plumes.

"He'll be furious, you know. And you can't argue with him the way you can with me."

Toby grinned sheepishly, even though it meant some of the smoke escaped.

The Holly-man muttered something under his breath and put his hands on his hips, cigarette hanging off his lips. Toby stared, fascinated at this display of utter slovenliness.

"Could use you for a job, lad. London needs a-Christmasing. Are you busy with anything right now?"

Toby pretended to think, but his heart beat fast. The chance for money was good if it meant Christmasing. He'd thought of it longingly enough but it was dangerous work for a single boy—more so if that boy was mute.

Agreeing to work on the hollies meant a chance for a bit of money and also it would keep the ire of Inspector Gregson off his neck. The man was a terror, especially if he thought you needed keeping.

"Watch out for that little scamp, Galvin." A passing bobby offered—Toby too late remembered him as PC Golden, a man who was missing a handkerchief thanks to Toby and a dare from the Paddington Street urchins. "And you, young Mr. Irish," a sharp stare peered out from the brim of a blue helmet, "I'll not be seeing you fanning the pockets of Galvin. The Tinkers have quite enough to deal with without your help.'

Toby gulped hard and shook his head, sending a cloud of louse-powder from his short-cropped hair. Both men sighed and the Gipsy man shook his head one more time. "I can put him to work, you never fear, sir." The little man assured him with the broad, white-toothed grin known among the Tinkers. "Hard to be dishonest when pounding on a drum, lad. What say you?"

Toby had never been able to try the Christmasing trade before. It was interesting. First Galvin gave him the mentioned drum—it was pounded metal inside a wooden hoop—and he beat upon the surface with a balled stick as they went down the street. Galvin bawled at the top of his lungs the presence of the holly, a penny a sprig, come sprig the puddings, come bring Christmas to the door, a ha'penny if not a penny, and come for a lot, only sixpence. They sold as they went, man, woman and even a child—a girl about Toby's age who wanted half a lot to take home for her sisters. Toby blushed to pass the prickly greenery to her, and was glad she didn't notice him.

Galvin cocked an eyebrow when she left, and said pointedly, "If you want to make sure a pretty lass never notices you, keep forgetting how to bathe." He clucked his tongue at the boy. "Almost to the greengrocer's and we can stop for a bit."

Toby soon learnt this meant one greengrocer in particular: A plump woman with a strange accent mixed up with cant. She had grey hair pulled into a bun and three aprons over her wool dress and carried enough mixed greens to bewilder a boy. It all spilled over the sides of wooden boxes inside the closed-in shop and pungent onion-like things hung from the tops of the ceiling with hot-pepper strands.

Galvin got along famously with the woman, for she bussed him on the cheek like a mother and scolded him for not eating right, one didn't dare get thin in winter, and although the Gipsy tried his best to get a word in edgewise, she ignored his attempts until she had the pot off the coals and hot cups of tea before them both.

"And leaving a young boy out in this," she charged the man in front of the few customers examining the leeks and lettuces. "Ashamed you should be. Just ashamed. Have a biscuit, I made them myself." And off she went to demonstrate the quality of her sage-bundles to a worried-looking housekeeper.

Toby was ferociously hungry at this point, but the biscuits were long and thick and as hard as frozen shoe-leather and it took time to gnaw on one end while holding the teacup. His jaw was hurting when Galvin noticed and the man cleared his throat and dunked his biscuit into the tea. Toby thought that was passing strange, but he copied Galvin and found the biscuit had grown soft and pleasant. It tasted sweet and something like the little paper cups the Italian ice man left behind on the streets of a hot day.

"Here you are, I'll just have my tea. I et a scone earlier." Galvin passed his portion to the boy, who quickly stuffed it up his sleeve for safekeeping. Galvin never blinked, lifting his voice to the greengrocer: "Did you get the garlands, Missus?"

'Of course I did." She sniffed back. "Bays and rosemary both…what do you take me for, young man? What you should be asking me is, have I changed my prices since we last talked?"

"If you had, I would have trusted you to tell me as soon as we crossed your doorway." Galvin grinned insolently and propped his elbow on the side of a wooden crate marked SALSIFY. Toby didn't know what it was and the label, that of a realistic-looking painting of a large green plant growing oysters like flowers, gave him no clues. "Did Mr. Gregson tell you to give me a hard time?"

"As if the likes of you needed help with a hard time, you rascal. I declare upon you. I'll be sure to tell the good Inspector myself…he comes in with the Missus every evening, you know."

"I'll keep that in mind." Galvin chuckled at the panic on Toby's face. "Walk a bit and get yourself warmed up." He advised.

Toby did, eyeing the strange explosions of growth that was hanging or in boxes or sometimes even growing. In the warmth of the shop a cluster of something that smelled spicy and sweetish was growing in a broken wine-cask. He frowned trying to place the smell and caught himself looking into the tiny, bright eyes of a mouse behind the woody stem. Mouse and boy stared at each other, and with the lazy confidence of an indoor rodent, the little creature slipped back into the shadows.

"Do you like my basil?" the old woman had come up behind him, smiling with her remaining teeth. "Difficult to keep in the cold, but good. The vermin they cannot stand it, no."

"Here we are, Hettie." Galvin lifted up a small packet. "What say you to these as part of the bargain?"

Hettie sniffed, her wrinkled face carving strange lines in the firelight. "I suppose if you want me to take your money from you." A clucking sound emerged from her throat. "Christmas fools and no doubt, no doubt."

"Not bad." Galvin said as they returned to the cold. The tea had been black and strong, heavy with honey instead of the usual cheap treacle. Toby felt full to bursting under its power and hammered with the drum eagerly for another half-hour as grey snowflakes filtered down the sky.

He was surprised when they stopped for bread and more tea, the tea from a metal can kept under Galvin's shirt like the sort the Bobbies carried. Galvin flashed a quick grin at the boy and sprung up, one hand on the metal lamp-post, tucking the can next to the low-burning white glow of the gaslight. While it heated he barked a quick order to another Gipsy with a passing cart of wax-wrapped slices of bread. Galvin haggled, passed over a ha-penny sprig for two of the packets and wrangled a promise to get a cheaper deal on his next order. Toby tore open the paper and bit into the bread with a starving relish, but Galvin put a heavy hand on his shoulder, stopping him.

"Go ahead and give us the rest of it, Hob."

Hob chuckled at the boy and pulled out a warm metal pot that curled steam from under the tiny lid.

Galvin caught Toby's confused stare. "You're in for a Gipsy treat." He promised. "Hold out your bread there." The little pot proved to be a hot measure of drippings that smelt of mutton and rosemary. Toby forced himself to chew slowly, hoping the taste would stay with him for the rest of the day. When they finished Galvin pulled down the tea-can and they shared the hot liquid.

The rest of the evening was uneventful, if a little strange. The police gave them a little trouble here and there, asking about the source of the hollies, but Galvin took it in stride and answered calmly with just enough cheek that showed he was starch enough to stand by his words. But even more queer was the presence of the other men with the Christmasing carts. A few looked nervous as they wheeled by, and their greetings were quick and curt. Two failed to look Galvin in the eye at all, and one, a scrawny man with twin girls to help, paused on the connector to Paddington Street and struck up a conversation.

"Didn't I tell you to be more careful, Galvin? The gents will be hard on you if you don't do what you're told." He passed an odd look to Toby. "Me, I've got little'uns to feed…I didn't know you did too."

"Shut your gob, you old mother hen." Galvin chuckled and lit another cheap fag. "He's not mine, I'm just borrowing him a bit. I need a boy who can do as he's told."

With that passing of words, Toby was more confused than ever, but his belly was growling again (he didn't know why it behaved worse after a little food was in it), and the lamps were taking the place of the pressing darkness.

Galvin smoked in silence for half the length of the fag and exhaled the last through his nostrils, passing the nearly-dead end to Toby's eager fingers. Toby had room for one good puff before the bit was twisted dead and hidden inside a pocket.

"What have I told you about making use of these orphans, Galvin?"

At the gruff sound of Inspector Gregson, Toby flinched almost into the cart but Galvin's eyes only narrowed, and he stared fearlessly up at the much-taller man.

"Not a making if giving a boy honest work, am I Inspector?" He almost whined in a voice that would have deserved caning on a boy. "He's just helping me along with my sales."

Mr. Gregson's pale face flushed red and square under the brim of a soft-crowned bowler, and he thrust large gloved hands inside his pockets before he spoke again. Around them people scurried, keeping to their business and hoping no one noticed them.

"And where would you be getting this fine crop of holly, Galvin? Been poaching the greens of the estates again?"

"Sir!" Galvin squawked, but Mr. Gregson was already lifting one hand up, his face composed and bored.

"I don't need telling you that any man with the holly is a suspect right now, sir. Unless you'd like a conversation about your day with Mr. Lestrade I recommend you keep to a straight road. The man's much less reasonable than I am, and you know for a fact he's not as smart."

"Well, right I know sir," Galvin sounded quite abashed. "Right I know."

Gregson's glittering blue eyes swept over Toby. "So that's where you are instead of school." Toby cringed. "Are you earning honest wages, lad?"

Toby considered the food he'd eaten and had no qualms with nodding eagerly. Galvin's share of the evening—half a crown's worth of money—jingled in his palm.

"Hand it over, my lad."

Toby blanched but did as he was told. Mr. Gregson pocketed the coins without pause. "Then off you go with Galvin. I'll take this to your good mother and assure that you're in good hands for the next few days. Christmassing will be over and done with before you know it, and you'd best take advantage of your time." Mr. Gregson sniffed. "You might sell better if he's clean."

"I was already planning on that when I got back." Galvin said hastily.

"Good." Mr. Gregson lumbered away, his large form riding over the mass of walking men and women.

"That puffed-up, conceited…" Glavin grumbled under his breath. "That fat-handed…"

They went to Paddington Street through a route that was far more trouble than it was worth. Galvin led them through a maze of snickets and back-alley paths until the boy was dizzy, and he hurried the holly-cart up to a narrow gate with strange looking carvings. Galvin boosted Toby up and the boy scooted over the top of the brick wall and hopped down, un-latching the door from the inside so Galvin could get through. The Gipsy breathed an outside puff of relief—absolute relief—and set the cart up against the wall as Toby locked the door.

"Thank goodness," he said in a much different tone. "All right, my lad. I have to get this inside the small shed ahead of you…can you carry a good arms-load of that holly into the kitchen for me?"

They stumbled in with the last of the cart's contents, and the housekeeper fluttered with her apron and fussed over Toby, asked Galvin why he was so late getting home and didn't he know the poor boy was half-knackered?

"He's strong as a little French horse, Mrs. Collins." Galvin stopped as he gently lowered the berried branches to a work-table, and yanked off his hat, muffler, and thin gloves with a deep breath. Out of his disguise it was hard to imagine he had ever been a Gipsy.

"Mr. Lestrade, you are fortunate I have an extra supper built up. As soon as the two of you are cleansed of your day on the road I shall bring it to you."

Toby liked being warm, but being warm in a bath-tub was a new experience. Mr. Lestrade told him in blunt words that he'd best get clean and he didn't care how many changes of water or turns of the geyser it cost; if he failed the lice-comb he was going to head straight to the paraffin and newspapers to take care of the little loafers.

Toby was glad to pass the lice-comb test.

Warm and clean, he sat wrapped up in a long wool shirt of Mr. Lestrade's that came down to the tops of his knees and a pair of socks that fit his feet quite well. Mr. Lestrade carved up a dish of fried apples and onions and thin slices of real salted pork. He didn't seem to mind that Toby ate like a wolf, but he pressed more bread and butter into the boy as he ate the other things. Much later with a groaning belly, Toby guessed he was wanting to take matters carefully and not let him fill on all the salt. The tea in the pot was red and tasted like the brew his mother used to make, back when his father was still alive.

"You're looking better now, Toby." Mr. Lestrade mused. He had stopped smoking once he was inside, but his dark eyes were thoughtful upon the boy. "How do you feel? Are you ready for bed yet?" A no was his answer. "Fair enough, lad. Would you be interested in helping me with a case?" The Inspector's mouth smiled rarely, but it was smiling now. "It won't be pleasant. You'd have to be with me as a step through cold fields and cut holly…probably some mistletoe as well. We have to collect a wagon of holly and that will take most of the day all by itself, but you can be paid for it, and you'll be paid for it well."

Toby thought of that, the half-crown, and the food he'd eaten that day and nodded without a doubt.

"Good lad." Mr. Lestrade grinned. "We don't want to upset Mr. Gregson, do we?"

Toby wondered about that as Mr. Lestrade bundled him into a sleeping pallet against the fireplace. The coal hissed and smelled like metals and the boy was comforted at how familiar it was. It reminded him of his home.

Mr. Gregson was always around, he thought a bit resentfully. Always around, always getting in his way and asking his business. It was hard to keep track of the man and yet he fussed too. He almost forced Mr. Lestrade to bring him home tonight, and wanted him to be cleaned up.

He didn't understand, but he supposed if he was clever and careful the answers would come to him by the morrow.

Tomorrow came earlier than expected. He was still blinking awake over tea with lots of milk when a loud rap rattled the door.

Mr. Lestrade swore. "Ease off, Gregson!" He snapped. "We're not deaf here!"

Mr. Gregson ignored that. He swept in with his face pink. "We've found him." He announced. He passed a glance and a nod over to Toby. "There's no doubt about it."

Mr. Lestrade swore again. "What kind of proof do we have?"

"All circumstantial. Even Mr. Holmes can't get anything concrete."

"Heavens of all the times not to want a Christmas miracle." Lestrade rose to his feet and Toby noted he almost absently put a fresh bit of bread down for Mr. Gregson. The bigger man bit into the hot roll without so much as a thank you. "So now what? Did I freeze my face off all week for nothing?"

Gregson smirked. "Wouldn't say that…it still has some freezing to go to fix your profile, Ratty. No, we're sticking to the plan."

Mr. Lestrade looked straight at Toby. "What about the lad?" He wanted to know.

"You told him much?"

Toby shrugged at them, stuffing more porridge into his mouth. With his free hand he spelled the letters in the air: J-O-B.

"Well a job it is." Gregson said soberly. "We've got a funny gang running around, scaring the Christmassers half to death and demanding they turn over part of their money or part of their holly. That's a lot of money. Do you know how much?"

Toby shook his head, no, and mimed a heap of coins on the floor.

"Try a hundred and fifty pounds at least for the amount of holly bought for the big church by Bow." Mr. Lestrade said softly. "It's enough to kill for."

Toby gulped at the thought of all that money.

"But we could use a bright boy like you." Mr. Gregson added. "You're smart, you're quick…and you see a lot. What we can't figure out is who the people really are behind this, or why they're going after the greensmen."

Toby made a question sign.

"We're not certain." Mr. Gregson looked at Mr. Lestrade and for once, the two didn't look angry at each other. "We think they're hiding something bigger behind the thieving…you know, how you used to lift someone's pockets and people would chase you, leaving the rest of your little gang to take care of the rest of the gulls."

"At least, we hope this is what you aren't doing any more." Mr. Lestrade added dryly.

"Ha." Gregson said. "Mr. Lestrade's been gussied up as Galvin the Gip for a week. He's been carting off to several estates with their permission, stripping down the hollies, the ivies and the mistletoes, and he's been making note of who comes and goes. But its rough work and its hungry work. He could use some help, an extra pair of eyes and ears. Most holly-men have a boy or two to help them anyway. It would help with the disguise—"

"Stop it, Gregson." Mr. Lestrade snapped. "Toby, this could be dangerous. Some people are missing that shouldn't be. The only thing they had in common was they were a-Christmassing for money and taking the greens to the churches and large-houses. We have a good idea on what's happening, but we don't have proof, and we certainly don't have a good description of all the people concerned."

"Interested?" Gregson grinned.

Toby thought it over quickly. He was ten, too old for the street-urchins now, and while he was quick for an adult he wasn't quick enough to compete on the street. So far he'd been paid in food and something to do, and Mr. Gregson had sent the money on to his mother.

He held out his hand to shake.

First Mr. Lestrade, then Mr. Gregson took it to seal the deal.

_1 dice_


	2. Chapter 2

Toby was not used to a full belly. He woke up on the floor by the fire-grate, a folded coat under his head for a pillow and a thick carpet over his shoulders. Harsh language floated through the glass as two men fussed over cab-fares, but the boy had heard far worse and would have been surprised at gentler language. He yawned and pushed up, stretching the muscles in his back. The flame was low but he eyed the half-empty bucket sadly. It wasn't his place to interfere with someone's coal-fees and a week's worth had to be stretched. It would be unthinkable to put even a pinch of his host's coal-dust into the fire without permission, even if everyone present shivered blue and gasping.

He sat up and put his back to the thin flame, waiting to wake up as the heat soaked into through the thin shirt Mr. Lestrade had loaned.

A _thump_ rattled the cold floor-boards and Mr. Lestrade emerged fully dressed with Toby's grudgingly-washed clothing swinging from a hanger. He had taken the whole bit downstairs during the night, and he was now shaking ice out of the folds. Chill but dry, he shook it one last time and hung the hook over a small nail over the fire-board.

"Let it warm up before you dress," he advised, and Mrs. Collins entered with an uncovered tray of food. Toby was almost more interested in the sight of the steaming teapot. She left as quickly as she came.

Mr. Lestrade only sighed through his nose at his landlady's odd little ways. "Eat as much as you can." He warned. "It will be no warmer out there today than it was yesterday, and it will feel a sight worse when we're where there will be no buildings to hold back the winds." He straightened and rubbed the back of his brown-stained neck, closing his eyes as he thought. "Don't mind me." He muttered. "Haven't been in top shape for a bit...I'll be all right when I can get some rest. It just won't be today."

Toby stopped in the act of pushing half the butter on a single slice of bread. He lifted his eyebrows.

"We're headed out," Mr. Lestrade swallowed too-hot tea and made a face. Newly collected shadows under his eyes made stark, bruised shadows about his temples and throat. Toby hadn't been certain yesterday but now he was positive something was making Mr. Lestrade...look..._younger _some how.

He didn't know how that could be. A man couldn't change his age for the better. Yet the worry lines and leanness Toby associated with the detective were smoothing away and taking the years off too. He didn't understand.

"First we collect some ivy for one of our buyers, and then we head out to the country. There's an entire estate with holly we have permission to cut—as well as the mistletoe, but we have to watch our step in case some rascals show up. They aren't friendly to people who might be taking their livelihood…forget that they're no better than poachers." He sipped from the edge of his cup slowly. "It will be cold, hungry work. You'll get a fair day's pay of it."

Toby was comfortable at the notion. Everyone knew those who went a-Christmassing could make a great deal of money…if the signs were on their side.

He re-dressed in the wash-room with the luxury of warm water coming out of the clanging geysers. This room had a looking-glass over the sink-a real looking-glass and not a shard of broken mirror picked up from the street. Toby studied himself out of curiosity, seeing some of his father in his growing face. His chin was stronger and his eyes were more grey than blue-something that made him sad, for he would have liked to be more like his father. Curious as any boy he opened up the looking-glass door and peeked at the shelves inside. He didn't recognise half of what he saw for there were odd bottles and salves and ointments with tooth-powders and grooming combs. He wondered why Mr. Lestrade would have so many things for moustaches and beards when he kept himself clean-shaven as a nun. Now that he thought of it, Mr. Gregson was the same way. Nearly every man on the Force in Toby's short years had some sort of ornament to their faces, but not these two men. It was a puzzle.

He poked at an odd-looking little bar of soap, nudging a little glass bottle with the motion. Toby winced at the indiscretion, but he was curious and the room was _warm_. The pyramid-bottle looked very queer, for his mother never allowed anything like poisons under their roof. He picked it up, wondering if it was a recycled bottle, but no. The ink on the label was red-proof enough the contents were poison, and the label was varnished on to keep it from falling off. A ring of sandpaper snuggled around the throat of the bottle, and the glass itself was dark blue-green.

Chemists had their own ways of marking poisons to protect people. Toby was as sharp as any street-urchin in identifying the different forms-it could mean a difference in price when going through the glass in the tip. Green or blue glass meant the older chemists were marking it as poison. Some made certain the bottles were sharp-edged so the fingers would know if the eye did not. A sandpaper ring or lid was how a person could find the bottle despite lack of light or sight. And the red label meant warning. Varnish kept the paper from crumbling or falling off from poor glue. Toby had never seen a bottle of poison that was marked so thoroughly in so many different ways.

All the Irish children were victim to curiosity. He pulled the bottle off the shelf and squinted hard under the sputtering gas-light in the wall. The letters were strange and only two words were in English. They made no sense.

Mr. Lestrade was a bachelor. Why would he have a bottle of some sort of poison marked "BEAUTIFUL WOMAN" inside a bath?

Toby looked about and found himself puzzled all over again. They were not the only tenants at Mrs. Collins'...but there was no sign anyone but an unmarried man used this room. There was nothing used to clean any of the noisy children he'd heard upstairs, or their mothers...nothing at all. A private bath was an unheard of luxury. No one he knew was wealthy enough...and Mr. Lestrade was without a doubt not making enough money to have a private bath.

Reluctantly, he put aside the riddle. For now. A mystery was as good as a rash and he wanted to scratch it. It made him a good spy on the street...and it made him a good helper to the police.

Toby finished dressing and came out to find another layer of clothing waiting for his benefit. He added a pair of Mr. Lestrade's wool stockings over his own and donned fingerless gloves for the first part of their chore. It was surprising to the boy, but he had managed to forget the Inspector's other face while he was being warmed and fed. The man vanished into his rooms for a quarter-hour (Toby heard the station-whistles blow), and came out as Galvin.

Normally Mr. Lestrade was a study of pride for his appearance and Toby remembered how his father would say that you could tell the stamp of a _good_ Bobby from their carriage. "No shabby-genteel, none of that." He would puff softly, red-faced at the table from the heart-congestion that would someday put him to rest. "They show themselves with pride for the Crown. Never go to a copper that pays too much attention to his looking-glass, for his _pride_ will be what leads him."

At this moment, Toby thought Mr. Lestrade looked like a very prideful Gipsy. His face and hair shone from lard. His coat was off someone's funeral auction and tiny stitches in black thread held countless little patches in place. A regular bloke might not have noticed, but Toby knew what a sleeve looked like when the patch was stitched on the inside. The edges of trouser-bottoms and sleeve-cuffs were frayed to thistledown and a crimson scarf hung off his neck, limp from too many bad washes.

"You'll need some of this, for we'll be all out in the cold today." He pulled a milk-glass jar from his pocket and liberally slapped the stuff on Toby's cheeks. "Rub it in where you think the wind's going to hit," he advised. "Because it can, and it will." The lard was rendered but it was cheap and crumbly and made them both wrinkle their noses. "I know." He told the boy. "I'd much prefer soft paraffin, or even moustache wax if I could get it, but we need to play the part."

Mrs. Collins met them at the door with a battered basket and a frowning face. "You'll poison yourselves with this fare." She informed Mr. Lestrade as she handed the goods over. "Stale sausage rolls. I've _never_ fed my lodgers so poorly."

"If someone sees us with your good cooking, they would notice." Mr. Lestrade smiled openly at the old woman, and the familiarity nearly shocked Toby out of his remaining years' growth.

"In your condition you ought to be resting." She scolded as they passed through the tradesman's-door. Toby wondered at the pile of deep green holly branches neatly stacked behind that door on the stone-work floor.

"Yes, Mrs. Collins." Mr. Lestrade agreed and dropped his face into the easy-grinning Galvin of his disguise. "It's a good thing she's in a good mood." He confided to the surprised boy. "I promised her the end of the ivy strangling up this garden."

The end of Mrs. Collins' ivy meant putting on the gloves and pulling for all one was worth. Toby gave his best and large yards of the greenery came down, protesting and stiff to the very bottom of the garden. The exposed brick wall hung naked and startled in the chill air. Toby panted, his nose red and tender from exertions and stood inside a large pile of coiled vine.

"Very nicely done, lad." Mr. Lestrade was already practicing his Gipsy voice. He used it now as he walked around Toby, coiling yard upon yard of crackling green-leafed vine about his left arm like a fisherman coils a rope. Each coil was placed neat as a thread-spool into the push-cart propped by the garden door. He taught Toby that "_bonar_" meant "good" and that the informants on the street were full of "_grolsinyath."_ Even at the end of the day Toby wasn't completely certain what the word meant, save that he didn't have the quality and that was a good thing.

Chilled, Toby stamped his feet inside his warm stockings (he already hated that he would have to return them), and watched "Galvin" place neat coils of crisp leaves into the bottom of the cart against the sides.

"Good enough." He announced. "Only one wall at a time…if we have to stick with this another set of days perhaps we can rid her of all the ivy, but we have places to be." He satisfied himself that a small satchel was also in the cart and he ran gloved fingers through greased-back hair. "Ready now."

Toby beat the metal drum until his fingers burned but the ivy was all sold within the hour. The speed of the sale surprised the boy, but "Galvin" grinned as he pocketed the last pence and touched his forelock to the departing butler.

"They won't do without the ivy in the house, lad." He explained. "It won't do at all. Holly they can't do without, even the poorest ones. But Holly and Ivy go together and you won't be seeing the well off without the two together." He hummed a few bits off the song Toby knew as "The Holly and the Ivy," before tipping his berried hat to a passing cluster of carolers.

"We'll be taking a bit to eat at the kip," he added. "Fancy you some meat today?"

Toby was getting used to the way Galvin talked and was starting to separate the Gipsy from Mr. Lestrade in his mind. He nodded hopefully and Galvin sent them to a seedy old church-kitchen off the High Street.

A busy little man in dark brown friar's robes met them at the door—there was a long, winding chain of men and a few boys like Toby but no women or girls, not even babies. This surprised Toby because it was his experience that old men would watch their grand-children while the others in the family worked. Even the crawlers in the mews stuck together. Slightly nervous at the strangeness, he stayed close as a cocklebur to the Gipsy/policeman.

"There you are and don't be losing these again!" Galvin scolded as he pressed a thin packet of cloth in Toby's hand. Toby's fingers recognised the feel of cutlery through cobweb-thin cloth. Galvin kept his own clutched in his left fist and glared with suspicion at some of the men in the line. Toby was a little afraid of the appearance of two or three. They looked close to Galvin's age, and had a hard glint to their eyes and a sulky way of chewing on tiny bits of tobacco. When they spoke it was amongst themselves and their only interest besides a hot meal was the chance of Steve Dixie against a new boxer from Plymouth.

Toby caught a terrible glare from the tallest of the three and quickly looked downward to the tops of his thin shoes.

The quarter-hour bells rang from the steeples just as they were allowed entrance. The friar paused and clasped Galvin's shoulders with two large, battered hands and thanked him loudly for his time. Toby guessed the man was deaf for he spoke too loudly against the hum of the city.

"A wonderful cart of holly, Galvin! We have the others setting them up for the Christmas dinner! Can you bring us some more, if you please?"

"Do my best, Brother. I'll do my best." Galvin touched his forelock again—another act of respect that was unknown to Toby. "I've got a few places where they let me cut a little," he added in a thick Tinker accent. "Now that I've got my lad helping me, I ought to have a good enou' cart in a few days."

"Well you'll get fair for it. I'm not buying from the grave-robbers or the thieves." The friar sniffed in the cold air while Toby shivered and wished they could finish walking through. "Just this morning a wretch tried to sell me a coil of Ivy that I knew was from the burial-grounds at St. Mary's! I sent him on his way, I did."

Toby was too cold to pay much attention to the dull talk between elders. He caught the eyes of a tall nun in the same drab colors of the little friar and she sent him against the wall where a trough of water ran into a drain. He washed his hands with a half-frozen cake of soap and dried them over a low-mounted gaslight.

Galvin joined him and they took their directed seats at a table that was really five long tables put together for a single continuous feasting. There were plates, flat-bottomed things with the rims turned up to catch gravy or broth, and tiny bowls of pickles here and there and odd bits of preserved fruits, but no silverware save what was brought by the diners. Toby could see only half the people present had their own ware. The rest would have to eat with their hands. He was not surprised at this show of poverty; the Irish children traded spoons or knives back and forth and there were only enough forks for his mother and uncle. Nuns and clerics walked through, dropping ladles of round mealy potatoes and mushy peas into plates. The gravy smelt of salt ham and black pepper. Toby swallowed hard, feeling faint and ashamed to be so hungry again so soon. A basket of large rolls went through, and Galvin advised him to keep the bread off the plate and to the side.

It felt like forever and his stomach growled, but they were all seated and the friar gave a very brief prayer of thanks and suddenly hands were flashing about the tables, grabbing up measures of pickle and relish and mushroom catsup. Toby didn't risk it, and ate his potato quickly, spooning up his peas with each breath. After that it was the gravy and he dipped it up until his spoon failed the task. By then Galvin, who had dined just as quickly, caught Toby's attention by using his bread to sop off the plate clean. Toby was glad to see this was not thought of as poor manners. His mother would have been horrified but he was _hungry_. He was still pushing the last bit of crust into a tiny crevice when Galvin dropped a forkful of beetroots in vinegar to his plate. Toby ate that too.

Dessert was served: A warm plum porridge rich with beef broth, plums, currants, and spices. Galvin scolded him for not eating enough in the cold weather as he spooned his portion on Toby's plate.

Finally, Galvin rose and silently washed his dinnerware in the running trough with the soap—he also washed the kitchen plate and Toby copied his movements. Finished, he trotted after Galvin into a cramped room cut of grey stone where the friar was seated at a large desk with a tiny charcoal brazier upon the corner.

"Strange times, is it not?" The friar asked of Galvin. "We live in the modern era of Our Lord, and yet the gasfitters simply cannot put modern warmth into my room. I suppose I should call this a cell and reserve it for proper meditations." His eyes crinkled up as he smiled at Toby. "Who is this fine young man, Galvin?"

"His name is Toby Irish. You may have known his good father, Partridge Irish." Galvin rested a large hand on Toby's shoulder. "He's a good help to me for the Christmassing business. Doesn't need to ask questions before doing what he's told."

"Good lad if this is the father I'm recalling." The crinkled eyes crinkled again and a rough hand was extended over the badly-scarred wooden desktop. Toby took it, pondering. Everyone knew his father had been a dealer in "little chickens" without a proper license. Never hurt a soul, but his livelihood was hardly approved. "You're helping Galvin, then? Is he paying you right?" He chuckled at Toby's emphatic nod. The bright blue eyes grew stern. "The weather will sicken tonight, Galvin. I expect both of you will take shelter before the storm."

"Is it your nose smelling the winds again?" Galvin grinned full of cheek, but he was quick to duck the holy man's admonishing finger. "I'll be careful, never you mind, Brother. I'll be taking care of the little one for his mum. He's already sent half a crown home to her, God help her with all those young ones to feed."

"As long as you don't forget, Galvin." The friar scolded. "I expect the two of you to fill up your baskets in the kitchen before you leave. Where will you be when I direct my prayers tonight?"

"We got the permission of Sir Roland to go to his estate for the greening." Galvin swelled up a bit at that. "All the bits we can take. I'm renting a full cart for the job."

"Don't you be bothering with renting. Tell Budwig's I sent you." The Friar wrote quickly on a grease pencil on the back of what had once been butcher's-paper, and passed the note to Galvin. "I have hopes you'll be finishing the order by the end of the week. My flock is a simple one but there are things which must be done."

"I understand, sir." Galvin touched his forelock.

"And don't be teaching the boy your trade, if you please."

"What trade?" Galvin openly grinned.

"Spare me your insolence, my son. It is the wrong time of year for cynicism."

Galvin took him to the kitchen where a bored-looking cook produced their half-ruined basket and scolded them for not finding a decent weaver for the wickers. Galvin protested faintly and set Toby to work sorting through the large pile of holly branches piled up in the corner like Mrs. Collins' own greens.

Toby liked the work. He helped Galvin pluck the plump red berries off the silver-grey branches and set them aside in a large wooden bread-bowl. It didn't take long to fill the bowl almost to the top and then Galvin gave him a length of fine cord (the sort used for fishing with very angry fish) and a brass needle fitted at the end. Galvin had a needle threaded on the other end, and they sat on the cold stone floor, each threading berry after berry through the needles until the cord grew redder and redder. A young girl who looked to be Toby's age but smallish kept peeping from behind her copper scrubbing-pot to check on their progress. Toby felt a bit more confident with girls now (he supposed she wouldn't know he was normally not this clean), and he frowned importantly when he came across a difficult bit in his work.

"This alone will be worth the time it took to cut the branches." Galvin showed Toby how to knot the cord every yard so the berries glowed in sections. "They'll pay just a bit more for the convenience of sizing."

After the berries, Galvin had them shape branches of a certain size into wreaths. The warmth of the kitchen kept their fingers limber, and the work went fast. Toby was fascinated at this creation of something out of very little nothing.

"Here, now, don't ever shape the branches contrary to the way they grew. It's got to look natural; 's got to hold together natural or it won't hold at all." Galvin bit on the end of a twig and pinned down a very springy bit of wood so Toby could tie it to the next length of wreath. "Good there…good. Now slide that bit of berry over there…" Galvin handed him three plump holly berries that had been put together with the thin wire.

Toby was disappointed when the last of the small wreaths were finished. The kitchen volunteers met their creations with sounds of joy. Toby looked for the girl but couldn't see her in the sea of starched skirts and aprons.

"Not quite done yet, lad." Galvin said gruffly. "Did you find the peas, Mrs. Godwin?"

"Right here, Mr. Galvin." A pink-faced plump woman who had out-worked any of the three younger women in Toby's witness bustled up like a fat-feathered hen with a tin wash-bowl filled almost to the brim with yellow split peas. Toby was puzzled and looked at Galvin for an explanation. His explanation was given by the Mrs. Godwin upon the placement of a bottle of denatured alcohol and red sealing-wax and small paint-brushes.

Toby had seen plenty of Christmas decorations in his young life. This did not mean he had thought much about them, or observed them particularly closely. It took a little time and effort but Galvin was patient and soon tiny yellow rosettes of peas sat in soldierly lines upon the table. Galvin melted the red sealing-wax into the denatured alcohol and dipped a few of the rosettes into the thick liquid. It set instantly and he wired them into small sprigs and sheafs. The rest he left alone; they would give the illusion of small yellow flowers in other wreaths.

"Split pea hollies." Galvin shrugged. "Half the trees in England don't even have a single berry on 'em, but all that green just doesn't look right without a bit of red."

Toby nodded to show he understood. He did, but it was simply something he hadn't thought of before.

"That's that." Galvin said in satisfaction. "One dinner each paid in full." He rose and shrugged into his threadbare coat. "Please tell the Friar we thank him for the horse. We'll be certain to return her as promised."

Toby was taken aback at the horse—it was ugly enough for the knacker's but carried the dignity of a funeral gelding. Galvin fussed over her a bit before hitching her to the small grocer's cart resting in the back of the little kitchen.

"They let me use her and the cart both, for services in trade." He explained. "They don't often ask for much but a helping hand is a good thing for them. I don't mind a bit of work in trade for a full plate." He grinned again, all pale teeth and dark skin with black eyes. Of all the differences between "Galvin" and "Mr. Lestrade," the eyes were the most alarming. Mr. Lestrade's eyes were dark enough but he was doing something to make them even darker.

"Hop up, lad."

Toby obliged, glad to avoid walking and wondering what part of London they were pointed.

The wind picked up and he burrowed deeper into his worn scarf. A tattered carpet piled carelessly at his feet and he wrapped himself within its musty folds, sneezing once at the dry hay-dust in his nose. Galvin whistled a tune under his breath, a jaunty sea-air as he walked the cart out of the mews and into the street. The roar of voices and carts, horses, vendors and news-sellers sounded like an ocean storm after the protection of the kitchen.

"Beggin' your pardon, gov."

Galvin touched his forelock to a knot of three men lounging at the alley-opening. Toby swallowed to see it happened to be the same three men that made him so nervous at the dinner. They scowled and frowned and chewed like donkeys and shuffled aside but their eyes were hard and grudging. Toby was afraid of them.

"Hoi, you! Gipsy!"

Galvin paused to a stop, one hand on the reins and the other hand draped loosely at his belt while the three thugs broke from scowls to hopeful malice. Toby shivered inside the blanket and clutched up the nearest object—the metal drum—but Mr. Gregson seemed uninterested in _him_.

The big man puffed up, face red from anger. "Where have you been today, you rascal!" He cried.

"Today?" Galvin affected surprise. "Why at the kitchen here, getting a bit of a sop. With the young lad here. You can ask him if you like."

"I've got better to do than ask a poor dumb boy any such thing." Gregson said hotly. He continued to scold Galvin with the force of a spring storm in front of the grinning men. Galvin acted just as ignorant that there were those who were hoping for bloodshed. He pulled a wooden ball out of his pocket and tossed it up and down in his hand while Gregson continued to shout.

"There's holly missing off churches and ivies off graveyards. When someone tells me a Gipsy man was seen nearby it doesn't take much to think of who it might be."

"Now, now, Mr. Gregson." Galvin purred. "I'm an honest man I am. Just look at the state of me." He pointed to his torn clothing as proof. "Not a bob to rub, much less the pound to get me Sunday suit back from the pawnshop."

Gregson turned cherry red. "You can pretend being poor means you're honest all you want, you dirty thief. I've got my eye on you and I'll warn you now because I am a man of the Crown's Law. If I so much as see any mischief with the greeneries on Pall Mall, I will personally hunt you down. You know more than you're letting on, Galvin."

"I'm sure I don't know what you mean, sir." Galvin sounded properly abashed, and swallowed hard. "Pall Mall's off my usual beat."

"Then you need to tell your twin brother the same, because I must have seen him the other day, walking his cart around the Mason's Temple. What would you know about that?"

"Nothing at all, sir. 'Tis a posh place, very posh. Too rich for the likes of me. They'll be buying their greens from the larger boys, not a poor old fellow like m'self."

Gregson growled his complete lack of belief. "My eye on you," he vowed. "And I mean what I say. If anyone so much as sneezes up there, you'll be getting your meals from inside the bars."

Galvin watched the big man go, and as soon as his back was turned, flashed a saucy grin to Toby. "Of all the cheek." He said to the boy. "As if I've not got better to do than sell to that crowd." The broad wink gave his statement away.

Toby nodded doubtfully, and he wished that Galvin hadn't winked so that the three rough men hadn't seen it. They were too interested in what was going on, and that was a fact.

Toby Irish was dumb, but he wasn't stupid. Nor was Mr. Lestrade. No one who lived off the streets of London would be quite so foolish as to speak of where they were going before strangers. Gipsies were supposed to be fearless within their own circles, but this wasn't fearless. This was...this was putting a dare out.

Galvin continued to whistle as he guided the horse to the proper side of the street; the three rough men were silent but the boy could imagine the burn of their cold eyes as they watched the cart head down the road. He was suddenly worried about many things.


	3. Chapter 3

Inspector Gregson hated the cold. He loathed it with a passion reserved for the topic of Satan at the rare services he had the time to attend. He hated it as much as he loved London, which might be why he refused to live anywhere else.

His duty shift had ended. He made his way home in angry blue cloud of smouldering penny cigarettes. The Yard's tiny kitchen had run out of tea and without a steady infusion of good black pekoe, his nerves followed his temper. By the time the bells chimed the evening hour, Gregson was desperate. He nicked the spare tea-can out of his office and endured the humiliation of filling it at the first tea-shop he could find on the long walk to the Colchester Building where he and his wife lived with two-and-twenty other renting families.

No one expected a police Inspector to have an _easy_ life, but Gregson's case was unusual. It is not _easy_ to be a member of the Metropolitan Police—the Met, if it were—and live inside the City of London, proper. Convenient the location might be, it didn't pay if one cared to avoid the day to day rivalry with the City of London Police. They were a lively lot, he had to admit with reluctance. But hidebound when it suited them.

(Even Lestrade wouldn't dare point out to Gregson that every single complaint he had against the Lord Mayor's Bobbies was exactly the same reason why he was proud to be a Yarder).

The wind kicked up and slapped his pale face, stinging blood to unwelcome places. Gregson cursed under his breath. He was normally quite proud of the control he kept on his temper, but the entire week had been for slops. He didn't know who he pitied more, Lestrade (which was saying something), or himself. He was hungry; his extremities ached from the cold allergy that plagued his family tree, and his soul yearned for a steaming cup of _real_ tea…At this point, Lestrade lost the pity-battle by the skin off his Grecian nose, the misbegotten runt.

Gregson hunched over at the shelter of a tobacco shop and defiantly sipped straight from his tea-can, just like his days in the blue. No one noticed his breech of manners, thank goodness. Gregson was always careful not to be seen under an improper lamp, to quote the Wonderful Welshman.1 The wind still blistered his nose and he wished for something stronger than curly black Assam leaf. A knot of children shrieked as they raced by, frantic to scoop up treasures of paper and bills and paste-board scraps. This was a city where everything went to use—the gong cart proved that. It still amazed him there was room left in London to be dirty. Even the dust and cinders were for sale—if you knew the right dust-man with the right understanding with the mortar-mixers.

Instead of going straight home to a warm supper and real tea with brandy, his troubled mind sent him wandering. Little good worrying the wife if he came home in a mood. She was a proper woman. Gregson knew his reputation of callousness to the fair sex, but that was because he knew what they were capable of doing with their large, soft eyes and timid speech. He'd seen too many silent murders of poison and neglect and even worse, to think well of a woman because she was a woman. Mrs. Gregson was proof a woman was as sharp as a man. If he didn't think this problem out she would know he had one as soon as he walked through the door, and he wouldn't think of trying to get it past her. Best he sort his thoughts out now instead of later.

A holly-cart rolled by, the holly-man dressed in outrageous colours while greenery dripped from his hat-brim. A passing Bobby gave the man a curt head-bob and paid the same compliment to Gregson. Gregson nodded back. He felt the wind again and took temporary respite in the shadow of Old Jewry.

Lestrade was out there right now, at old so-and-so's posh estate, pretending to be one of those holly-men. If he vanished like the others, the Office would just have to notice. It stuck in Gregson's craw to face the bitter truth, but the Christmassers were as vulnerable as geese in the fox-farm. They were poor and without fine friends; they were often floating from job to job, and it was too easy to find victims in their numbers.

A man out a-Christmassing took a risk going alone. He might find himself a nice plot of ivy or holly, mistletoe if at his most fortunate…but the labour could be mind-numbing and dangerous in winter weather. Time and again the bobbies would find a young man nursing bloody bruises and a dazed face, jumped for their "Christmas" by a mercenary rival and left penniless for the day's sweat. The boys who laboured might be luckier, but their money usually went to the food they gobbled down at the end of a day. It still cost a 2d for a quarter of a good meat-pie in thriftier pubs. A hungry lad would easily eat three times that.

Three fully-grown men had vanished without a trace between the first of the Christmas season and the middle of the following week. All three men had been alone, but they had also been the sort of men that wouldn't get in trouble. Gregson knew their lot at a glance: hard-working, taciturn, patient and sharp-eyed. They went to their "fields" at night when the moonlight allowed them the sight. Most telling of all, they had been discreet in their harvests. When a tree was robbed by a skilled Christmas-man, the tree still looked like a tree. Not so the ragamuffin crowds or the hasty opportunists who had left more than one tree stripped and startled and on the edge of death.

No land-owner in possession of reason wanted to see his trees stripped of leaf and berry. Hollies were effective hedge-rows and ivies could grow between the spaces, discouraging the mark across the property lines. It was offense enough to see that someone had been on their precious acres without permission. And some of that lot…well, they were the gentlemen's quarter to be sure, but Gregson loathed to offend their humours. They had a gift for protesting and a way of knowing who one answered to…and they never hesitated to report a whey-faced policeman for imagined insult.

So. Person or persons unknown were for some reason disposing of Christmas-men. Three men in less than a fortnight; it was not good. Whispers and rumors were not reliable means of information, but one of Murcher's old blows had admitted folks were "staying clear" from the road out of Surrey.

Gregson pulled out a fresh fag with hands as cold and clumsy as broken icicles. He smoked angrily until the blue fog enveloped his face and curled about his hat-brim. His nose burned but the smoke was warmer than the air surrounding.

There was a chance…a slight chance that cracking this case would draw favourable attention from the appropriate corners. Normally he didn't work a case with Lestrade but this promised to be as unusual as the Lauriston Gardens mess.

Gregson blew smoke from his tight lips and watched it curl and falter to the bottom of the cobblestone street. Before long night this entire city would be dull and dark with coiling smokes like this, factory-fog running yellow and slippery on everything a man touched. The walking-crowds were breaking up, hurrying along to their homes or destinations. Best not be out before the air turned thick with dusk.

OOOOO

Gregson made it home before the bells chimed the seventh hour. Colchester Building was a typical middle-class establishment for this part of London: The walls were grimly scoured, the roofs were sound, the wrought-iron oiled…and the architecture was proof that one could put more on the inside than the outside, just look at the number of souls calling this home.

His wife met him at the door before he could finish turning the key. About them the thumps, bangs and turmoil of two-and-twenty other families resounded like so many peas shaken inside an empty tin.

"Hulloa, pet." He gave her a quick peck on the cheek, getting a smile in return. The post was resting by the tiny end-table and he tucked the coal-bill in the pouch hanging off the small coat-tree by the miniscule fireplace.

It was small and cramped, but they were childless and their needs were few.

Louise (Elise, Pet and sometimes to her husband, "Pretty Girl") was dumb like Toby, but she never lacked in the ability to "speak". Before Gregson knew it he was seating himself at the small settee and elevating his bare feet before the fire while she hung out his damp shoes and put his stockings in the soaking-wash. Once dry she looked less unhappy with him and produced a clean pair of dry woolens. He thanked her with a smile—he spoke rarely in her presence, which led to more than one person observing that the Missus never let Gregson get a word in edgewise, but it never seemed sensible to him that a man should speak to someone who couldn't speak back—it was considered rude to speak in a foreign language in the presence of someone who couldn't fathom it so why would this be different?

Gregson treasured quiet, but it was a rare commodity in the Colchester. They made their peace of the evening with constructed contentment, sipping bowls of thin beef broth with fat brown mushrooms and green spinach leaves. The wind howled outside their single window, and twice the gas flickered in the grate, its fuel taxed by the needs of the others in the building. Close to the window the sounds of the other tenants muffled and grew dim. They preferred the whistle of a draft to the ruckus of a quarrel any day.

His wife cleared the soup-bowls and bread-plate without preamble and picked up her needles at the other side of the settee. This time of year she was always knitting someone some _thing_ for the holiday. Gregson didn't mind the clicking. He leaned back and allowed his freshly-washed head to lean against the top of the horse-hide.

His thoughts wandered and he almost dozed before he caught on to the fact that the sound of knitting had stopped. He opened one eye to find his better part sitting and watching him with deep patience in her violet eyes. A single lock of pale red-gold hair hung down her heart-shaped face.

In some small part, a policeman treasures a mystery. This might explain the strength of their marriage, for the good Mrs. Gregson was a mystery in herself.

Gregson puffed out his lips and wished he were permitted his penny cigarettes in their rooms. "Nothing, love." He pursed his mouth as if smoking. "Nothing that has much to do with me. That fool Lestrade is out there tonight on the heels of a storm and he'll be in the country with Young Irish."

She tilted her head to one side, and many sentences with questions glimmered in her dark eyes.

"Yes, well, I'm sure he knows what he's doing." Gregson harrumphed. "The fool can't find a klew on a kerb—" He made certain to pun with the 'k's sharp sounds. "And the lad's got the share of sense what missed his uncle. The two of them actually happen to have the sense to come out of the rain even if they don't know enough to buy an umbrella." Folding his thick arms across his chest, Gregson rubbed his fingertips together, grateful for their tingling warmth. "It's just that they'll be without any police if something goes amiss." His lip pouched in a scowl above his chin. "We've got ourselves a dirty case, pet. No mistake about it…no mistake."

OOOOO

The cart rolled south. Toby was not familiar with the parts of London that were outside a forty-minute walk from the Thames, so he was fast out of his depth and a little lost when the tenement rows melted to tired little streams of dirty water and open fields of snow.

Galvin had little to say over the trip except to tell Toby where they were going, and how long they expected to be there. He was wary and kept asking Toby to turn around and check on their possessions, a trick that gave the boy ample time to look about and see if they were being followed. Once Toby was almost certain they were; at the very end of the tenement houses he looked back to see the foot of a man ducking out of sight. When he pointed this out to Galvin the man merely nodded once without making a sound, and erased the chalk-marks off Toby's little slate.

Toby wasn't certain what he should be thinking about his companion. He had rallied after their dinner at the kip, but he tired quickly. His face was pale under the trickery of the walnut-stain upon his skin and he shivered inside his layers. Toby was not the sort of person who regretted being a mute; all his life people had told him there was a reason for his lack of speech, and today he was grateful. No one expected a speechless person to talk. He honestly wouldn't know what to say.

They stopped at a snow-choked field dotted with twisty-looking trees and Galvin simply pulled the cart to the edge of the road, sharing his body-warmed tea-can with Toby and waiting without a word for something to happen. That "something" turned out to be a huffing, red-faced Assistant Gamekeeper who carried a slender firearm in his hands and tried to walk through the snow with thick boots.

The two men spoke quietly as the occasional cart rattled past, and the gamekeeper produced a small ticket of green paper which Galvin pocketed in his tattered waistcoat. After a few minutes of odd pleasantries about the weather, the keeper tilted his head and allowed that the young lad looked like a fine help.

"He'll do, Chadwick." Galvin—but now he was Lestrade again—grinned. "He'll do just fine. Eyes are sharp against the snow-glare, and that's not something I can trust right now."

Chadwick snorted. "I would imagine." He leveled his disapproval. "But if you keep taking that poison you won't be trusting your eyes in the light of the full moon—which I might add, is coming up ever so slightly soonish."

"Can't be helped." Mr. Lestrade shrugged. "It can't be helped."

"Take the back acres. No one's trimmed the greens in a few years. The Master will be pleased to see them gone, calls them all parasites." He grinned himself, and passed the grin to Toby. "When a copper retires or gets retired, he might as well learn a new trade, eh? So you're Toby Irish. You bring me mind of your old feller, Mr. Toby." The smile was rueful and almost fond. Almost. "Partridge" Irish had exactly that effect on people.

_OOOOO_

"He's a good man." Mr. Lestrade said under his breath as they set the cart at a sheltered point off a personal road. "A skirmish cost him his badge, but he still thinks like a copper. Not a bad thing, really, but I'd rather have him back with us." The wistful expression on his face ended quickly. "Chadwick is one of the few people we wouldn't be able to fool with the disguises." he warned. "A real Tinker is a clean, neat, tidy person. They take pride in their appearance."

Toby looked down, bewildered at his clothes which had never been so clean until today.

Mr. Lestrade chuckled. "We're slovenly next to that lot. Someone like us is tapped as looking like a Tinker without knowing how…or a Tinker who has been exiled for some crime. Either way, we don't look like anyone would miss us in our absence."

Toby wondered what in the world a Tink would have to do to be exiled…no one was as despicable as a traveler. He didn't know they had their own standards of appearance. It was a queer thought.

"What we'll be doing…" Mr. Lestrade cleared his throat and pointed by nodding with his head. "Is harvesting the mistletoe here. You see the large trees at the edge? Those are oaks. They're taller and their leaves are all fingery. The mistletoe is nice enough, but there's just not that much of it on the trees. The shorter trees below that have twigs like a bad mop of hair wanting a comb…those are apples. Mistletoe is fond of the apple tree, lad. And you'll note there's less tree to climb! We'll both be doing some of that climbing…" He pulled out a strange little crescent knife with a wooden handle. "Wipe the handle if it starts to get slick with your sweat. If it gets cold you might just stick to the thing, and the sap's poison."

Toby gulped hard. It was his loudest vocalization.

_OOOOO_

The work was hard. It was also hard. Snow crunched under Toby's wooden soles and they both puffed like steam engines as they trotted from tree to tree in search of the mistletoe. Mostly one would cut and toss the clumps to the waiting partner, who would then collect all into a pile. Galvin never said a word about it, but Toby reasoned he didn't want to risk them both separating.

And he didn't blame Galvin for thinking this way. The ground seemed all open and clear when one's feet was ploughing through the snow, but up in the branches there were large areas against the white and black that could be places to hide or where things would lurk. Galvin's eyes shifted constantly, and under the dim sunlight (dim indeed for the outskirts of London this time of year) he acted as though things were far too bright. Toby's mind examined these strange bits of information as his hands stayed busy with cutting clump after clump of green vine with pale white berry.

Of course he'd seen mistletoe plenty of times, but it was all limp stuff, the berries slowly drying to gummy raisins over the doorway. He remembered (dimly) how his father would always bring in plenty of their own holly and mistletoe and ivy and even long rope-hanks of wild oregano from his jaunts into other people's pheasant lands. They had never wanted for Christmas in their house during his life.

He remembered better how his father would trade a kiss with his mother in the doorway, and for every kiss a berry was removed from the mistletoe. At the end the vine was thrown to the burn-pile with the other greens. Pulling down all the Christmas had been sad, for the leaves were dirty with soot and the berries (even the real berries) were dry and flattened.

The sadness ended with the burn-pile, for there had been something exciting about piling branch after dry branch into hungry white flames. For brief seconds a vine of ivy would be glorious with fire. Mistletoe hissed and the King Holly would burn so brightly they felt the heat of it within their woolen layers.

They would be warm, they would laugh, and they would run back and forth throwing everything they could upon the fire and the sadness was gone because they were burning out the past and making way for the new.

"Hsst."

Toby's thoughts were interrupted by a low hiss through Galvin's teeth. He glanced down from a tangle of the weed and narrowed his gaze down to his companion. Mr. Lestrade—Galvin, he reminded himself—was not a very tall man. His slight body gave him the impression of further smallness. But right now he was locked in a single position and peering up at the boy.

"Best we finish." Galvin spoke as quietly as possible. In the snowy quiet of the fields Toby realised that even the birds had stopped their singing.

"Finish now and come down, lad. We need to get away…" Galvin's voice softened even further. "Trouble afoot of the storm. Get down. Be quiet."

1 Davids, the man who took several inspectors under his wing in my canon, including Lestrade.


	4. Chapter 4

Toby Irish was a half-orphan who spent most of his life spinning in the streets of London. He knew what it meant to be afraid, but he was never happy about it. In his mind fear was something for _children_. His vaguely formed theories held that fear was something to be outgrown like a set of breeches, and that when one had finished growing and became a man, fear would have no further effect.

Seeing Galvin—Mr. Lestrade—whisper him down from the tree with tight lips and wide eyes was enough to make him rethink his philosophy. He scarpered down as coolly as he could manage—nothing brought the eye of a Bobby or an angry Mark faster than acting guilty. He tucked his toes inward and slipped through the branches, dropping down the rest of the way into the snow.

"Good Lad." Was the other's short response. "Let's get the greens to the cart, hey?" A quick rattle of words in the Tinker Cant buzzed through Toby's ears like bees, but he didn't understand more than the tone and that would have been clear to a deaf man: _Hurry up, hurry up, hurry up._

Snow squeezed into Toby's boots through the gaps in his rough stitches. His stockings were drenched, toes going numb as he struggled through the drifts in the wake of Mr. Lestrade. The boy marveled that when he had to have it, the man's stride was very long indeed.

"Up you go, Lad." He was lifted up and swung like a meal-sack to the cart-seat. The horse blew through its nostrils, ears moving like an uneasy cat's. Toby wasn't easy close to horses. They were too…big.

"Look up."

Toby obliged, and was puzzled. All he could see was the usual dark grey cloud hovering overhead.

"Wrong time of day." Mr. Lestrade murmured. "The storm's about to hit us, lad." He coughed once, and bundled deep into his coat. "The weather-men had a different view of the day," he explained under his breath.

Toby wondered why such a fuss was being made of the weather, when one didn't need to hide from the weather by talking quietly. And now his sponsor was speaking loudly enough to be heard by the birds in the next acre. He shrugged to pretend he didn't care and pulled the tattered carpet around their legs for warmth. The buck-board kept the worst of the cold off their backs, but once in a while a draft found a spare hole in his clothing and whistled through.

The boy watched as the cart full of greens slowly turned to the small slip of a frozen road. By now he had puzzled out the reason for such little traffic. He was too much a London-child to really believe a road would not be in constant use…but this seemed to be an old gentrified bit of trod and there were less than three pairs of wheels rutting streaks into the snow. Galvin clicked with his tongue and the gentle horse rocked slowly forward, its velvety ears still twitching and dipping like a rabbit's. Toby wondered how the horse felt about plodding on such a quiet way. To his London ears this was all strange and unnatural.

"By the by," Galvin whispered, and it was suddenly Mr. Lestrade talking. "This bag of bones here is an old war horse. Doesn't spook at anything less than cannonball or a pool of blood. So you _mind_ what this knackering-prize does."

Toby nodded and swallowed hard.

"Get yourself something to eat in the soogin, Toby."

Mr. Lestrade used his name very rarely, and usually when getting his attention. Toby fumbled for the wrapped bottle of tea inside the burlap and found it had been filled with barley coffee and a splash of brandy. A little went a long way. He sipped and nibbled on a piece of bread that was fresh, but it was so stiff from cold it felt stale against his teeth. Hard-cooked eggs and sausage rested inside a nook in the soft part of the loaf. He was careful to divide the portions equally.

"Tinkers don't talk much when they're on the road," Mr. Lestrade said almost casually, and he sounded as bland as a man discussing the weather or a new law. "It isn't a good idea unless there are a lot of them…for protection, you see." His large, too-dark eyes stared about with a frightening unfocused gleam against the soft grey snow. Toby shivered for those eyes didn't seem to see so much as see _through_.

The cart rolled painfully slow to London. Every foot crossed was a foot off Toby's un-shaped fears.

Mr. Lestrade had seen something while they were cutting the mistletoe. Toby hadn't seen a thing for his ownself, but then he had also been studying on the way to cut the greens without hurting himself against the small knife.

_OOOOO_

A flake of snow floated down in the road…followed by another. Before long a veritable shower of dingy white lace spun here and there. A delicate chain of frozen flakes caught on their arms and hung thin chains off Toby's battered up hat-brim. Toby was overly proud of his bowler because he had a large size for his age and it was proof (he felt) he would be a properly large man someday (perhaps in a year or two). He frowned and flipped his hands through the lace-work, brushing them away from his eyes. He was dismayed to realize his actions meant nothing, for the snow began in earnest before they passed the old mile-post before the Surreyside mark of London. The wind kicked up and blew upon their passage. The boy coughed and blinked quickly. Brittle snow could hurt his eyes as much as cinders off the train. This was another new experience for him.

"Here we are," Galvin muttered under his breath and to Toby's surprise, the man pulled out a half-broken cheroot and posed it between his lips. A quick strike of the match created a glow that made Toby's hands ache with longing, and he bowed the little match-box to light up the fag he was hoarding inside his thin waistcoat. The heat off the tiny poplar-wood stick was heaven against his chilled skin and he relished it for the few precious seconds it lived.

"Look alive, Toby." Galvin used his name again, and his eyes were facing solidly forward. Toby peered but saw nothing in the strange, soft light of grey snow under a darker grey sky. This time of day one would see factory-ash mix with snow as brightly as natural flakes. The overall effect was a strange, bewildering grey curtain that blocked the attempts of the eye to peer through the lengths.

But he kept looking, and he did not write on his slate to ask why Galvin was growing more and more alert the closer they got to the mile-post marker. It was hardly an impressive thing. Some sort of short little and blocky stone bit of pillar and a broken triangle of stone on top, letters cut on the sides instead of numbers. But without warning Toby's eyes clicked on to an understanding and he could see the broken-down remains of an old toll-house hidden in the snow. Behind the toll-house huddled a shattered wooden shed and off to the horizon on the far edge of the fields he could make the remains of an old sort of farmhouse, stone-founded and well-assembled for the walls, but pieces of the roof hung open to the sky.

"A fire took her out some years ago." Mr. Lestrade murmured.

Some years? Toby studied Mr. Lestrade's face for a joke.

Mr. Lestrade smiled under his Gipsy face-paint. He almost looked like himself at that moment. "The country folk keep to old ways, lad." He puffed his cheroot a moment more. "A building burnt down will not be rebuilt in the same place."

If London had such a practice, there would be very little of London to walk in. Toby shook his head at the odd notion.

"They keep to the old ways." Mr. Lestrade repeated. "They can afford to."

Toby didn't think that sounded very good.

_OOOOO_

Mr. Lestrade's body was warm against Toby's chilled form. He felt the man stiffen up slightly and Toby turned his head to look—just in time to see how the gloved hands tightened to iron around the leather rein.

A small tavern perched on the side of a stone wall—too low and too old to really be a wall. On the other side of the wall rested a tight-built barn and while it had been hammered out with some pride and thought…the hosting structure was slovenly. Yellow coal-smoke coiled cheerfully up from a metal chimney-top that looked as though it had been found in a rubbish-heap. Fiddle-music scraped without grace from the inside and men were laughing. The small wooden windows hung open, letting the warm air out of the tavern and as they passed the cart before the row of posts, a drunken man staggered out to relieve himself against the battered walls. Until this point, Toby had not thought of himself as a particularly sheltered boy. This sort of behavior was more to the eastern part of London, where even the priests were hesitant to call the citizens anything but savages.

"I can see the local constabulary has its hands full here." Galvin muttered under his breath. Toby knew it was Galvin from the way he was suddenly talking—short-clipped with rounder vowels and a scattered toss of his head so much like a horse.

"Well, halloa, there!" The drunken man straightened and lurched over the road-edge. In the interest of not running him down, Galvin slowed the horse. He reached up and patted the long neck but the nag was not in the least bit impressed or humoured. It tossed its head to the side with a sharp snort.

"Pretty girl," the drunk crooned. "Pretty girl. Out a-Christmassing? Out with 'chrisssthmasth." He grinned up at Galvin. "Got any to sell, Gip?"

Galvin grinned with all his teeth. "Sell to who, Guv?" He tapped his forelock against his forehead. "That all depends, it does."

"Come on, sell a bit of green." The drunk wheedled. "Sell it for us here. There will be ladies tonight."

"Now, none of that." Galvin (much to Toby's mortification) clapped his gloves over Toby's ears.

"Oh, come." The drunk pressed when he was finished roaring with laughter. "The city folk get all the good pieces and what've we got what survived the cutting from last Christmas in the hedgerows! What do you say, mate? Might as well get off that glue-mare and come on in."

"I thank you, sir, but I'm sure the establishment doesn't want to let the likes of us in. Looks like it was just cleaned."

Galvin's voice was so dry and pleasant that Toby wondered how it could also sound so dangerous.

"It's my tavern, sir. I can do as I please. And you'll notice the skies, eh?" The man swayed on his feet, and belched once. A horrid smell of yeast and malt floated across the air to Toby's sensitive nose. He puffed quickly on the end of his fag to spare his sense of smell. "There's a spot for your nag out back."

"Oh, is there?"

"Now, not because of that, Master Tinker." The drunk grinned back. "Barn's roof is poorly though it looks tight. The horses are all out back in a hay-house. Wouldn't want the snows to push the whole place down on their heads."

"Na, sir, I thank you for your hospitality…" Galvin grinned even wider (Toby was starting to see this was Mr. Lestrade's least trustworthy expression as a Gip). "But I'm running late as it is and I suppose I can run ahead of the storm. Got to take this lot to Bart's, sir. Don't want to disappoint the ones at Bart's?"

"Bart's?" Like a curtain parting, the drunk blinked both eyes and found a straight way of standing against the beaten fence-post. "Well now, I don't think I would say no to a hospital."

"You'll see me again on the morrow if the storm passes." Galvin promised. He clicked up the reins and the drunken man managed to lurch away, missing his foot under a hoof by a hair. "Take care, guv."

Toby sighed, for the thoughts of a warm tavern—even if the men inside it were drinking spoilt malt—was a pleasant one. He stared over his shoulder in open longing to the tavern.

The drunken tavern owner was standing hunched half in the road, scuffing at the frozen mud and new snow with a new boot-sole. He looked up one last time from beneath his brimless hat, and Toby shuddered at the flash of hate directed at them. Just as quickly it was gone, leaving the boy to hope he had imagined that spite from under the shadows of the oversized hat.

"We're not staying in a place like that." Galvin hissed under his breath. "Not if I'm freezing to death. Any time you see a tavern with a name like 'Hotspur' is a tavern where you're going to have to watch your money, watch your watch, and your boots, your cufflinks, and hope you aren't found hanging from the rafters with your own muffler!" He stopped and gave the boy a sheepish look. "It isn't a nice sort of place." He amplified.

Toby nodded to show he had understood. And he did. All the warmth didn't change the fact that the man seemed to hate them with a passion.

"What is it, lad?"

Toby sighed but mimed the man's face and how it changed.

Mr. Lestrade only shrugged. "You see it so often you don't really see it after a time." He shook his head. "They're not a well-respected people though they are liked. I'm beat to explain why you can have one and not the other so strongly. There are plenty of the Queen's own soldiers who would rather take an enemy bullet before they would let a Tink save their lives." He muttered something inside his muffler that possibly was not fit for Toby's ears before pulling his face back out. "I got us out of there because I was willing to swear I saw a shadow at the top of the hill where the big apple trees rest. Did you happen to see anything?"

Toby shook his head, no.

Mr. Lestrade sighed. "I hope I'm not jumping at shadows again." He wished under his breath. "Well, we're safer on the road. All we need is to get to London…and with luck that will be in another two hours."

Toby agreed with the projected plan. Two hours was tolerable even though the sky was growing ever darker and the flakes were gaining size.

"Tired?"

Toby jumped inside his loose coat and shook his head wildly.

"Don't give me that. You were nodding off. No sense you toppling off into the drifts." Mr. Lestrade leaned back and yanked at a length of carpet in the back of the cart. A mountain of mistletoe shifted on top of the cloth and rolled away. "Get under that. Make certain there's a good layer of straw between you and the bottom of those planks. I don't know who made this rickety box, but he was overly fond of splinters."

Toby hastened to obey. His feet were cold in their wet woolen stockings but not freezing. He curled up into a ball and darkness slipped over his head, rough and scratchy and smelling of stables and horse and crumbling sweet applewood. Within minutes of feeling his body rock back and forth with the wheels, he was asleep.

_OOOOO_

The boy woke to darkness, perfect warmth, and the loud cursings of Mr. Lestrade's cab-neighbors from below the window.

Toby blinked, warm all the way to his toes and yawned as he tried to stretch. Heavy wool—very heavy—stopped his movement and he woke up with a groggy frown. The blanket had not been so heavy when Mr. Lestrade had piled it on…he remembered now he was in a cart. But the cart had almost stopped moving. He tried to move again, and the weight about his shoulders frightened him. A panicked struggle found his head in icy air, and the sting of snowflakes patted his tender cheeks.

"What is it, Lad?"

Toby blinked wildly and looked around, but honestly could see nothing but the faintest of shadows upon shadows. He put his hand before his face, hoping he could at least see that.

"Easy there."

The cart stopped. Stopped completely. Toby could hear the sound of snow falling about them…it was like gentler rain, but more dangerous. You could walk through rain. Not this. He breathed deep to get rid of his panic.

Snow crunched under Mr. Lestrade's boots and a snow-clad mitten patted him on the shoulder. "You woke up just in time. We'll be separating the cart from the horse now. Can you ride? Just tap my hand once if it's a yes."

Toby cleared his throat and complied.

"All right, then. I'm going to lift you up in a moment…" Snow fell and fell against Toby's hat and shoulders as horse-hooves moved through invisible drifts in the darkness. Galvin guided him into sitting up and with a grunt Toby was in the air and settling a little roughly upon a snow-slick horse's back.

"Just hang on there. I hate to do it, but we're going to have to get back to that flea-trap." A lurch of the horse and Toby held on for dear life, but this really was some sort of war-horse. He had never thought that a horse would be capable of going through thick snow like this.

"Just have to make do." He heard the man's voice, soft against the sound of swallowing snowflakes. "I'm sorry about this lad. I know its not comfortable. But we'll be out of the rough soon. That man will just have to deal with two Gipsies free-boarding in his barn and no mistletoe to pay for it."

Barn?

Toby remembered very clearly that the man had said something was wrong with the roof. Why were they going to the barn? His heart pounded as he tried to think of a reason, but nothing came. At last he clicked his tongue in an effort to get Mr. Lestrade to stop.

"There was nothing wrong with that barn." Mr. Lestrade told him wearily. "I know full well what a barn looks like. There were tracks running in and out of it like it was the High Street off the Met. He didn't want us in his barn because we might contaminate the place. I've heard it a hundred times while out of twig, lad. We're just going to claim we were lost, pay him his wretched greens on the morn and get out as fast as we can." A soft sound, almost a laugh rippled against the boy's ear. "And don't worry. I can see clear as day right now. It's…one good thing about being on the medication."

Toby had to be satisfied with that, but he didn't like it. He didn't know what Mr. Lestrade meant by medication, and he didn't like not knowing. But most of all, he didn't like the fact that the drunken tavern-keeper had made him think of the cold, burning hate in the eyes of the men watching them roll out of London. So he dug his small fingers into the rough mane of the nap and held on for all he was worth, trying not to think of either man as Mr. Lestrade led the three of them to some sort of safety.


	5. Cannon or Blood

_Some of you sharp-eyed and elephantine-memoried readers noticed I have this dated in 1881, the same year things were very, very VERY interesting for Messers Gregson and Lestrade (Lestrade especially). Well you weren't imagining things. I had wanted to put "one last adventure" inside the big adventure with Test of the Professionals but there wasn't room, there wasn't time and it was too close to Lestrade's mandatory vacation at the local hospital due to the attentions of the local nutcase/master criminal/philosopher._

_Ergo, this story is going to be a "set aside" piece until I can go back and scratch my head until I figure out where I can put this story…or what I have to do with facts and figures and dates so it will fit in without conflict. For now, this is at Christmas 1881. Expect this to change as soon as I come to a solution. Somehow._

_OOOOO_

Gregson couldn't sleep. His eyes stared about his flinty firelit-room until they ached. Each fleck of snow against the building was another potential stab of the ice-pick against the tow-headed man's unease.

He would strongly deny the sensation within his chest was _guilt_. He didn't _like_ Lestrade enough to feel guilty; Lestrade had half a hundred mental crimes against him for taking Gregson's chance in the stage-lights…moments of glory in the papers that ought to have gone to Gregson and attention from the Home Office that would have been better off in his direction…but he did have a sense of duty to a fellow policeman. Duty demanded he would know what to do as soon as possible and act without hesitation.

Gregson rarely hesitated. He was confident to a fault but a man in his position was better wrong in his actions than wrong from lack of decision. This strange hesitancy was unpleasant and he disliked it immensely.

Lestrade was capable of taking care of himself (even if he didn't know how to solve a case staring right at his pointed Greek nose). He had the safety of Young Toby on his mind. He wouldn't behave in a way that would place them in jeopardy. Look alive was the basic assignment: Look alive, seek information.

He rested as long as he could under the layers of coverlet and carpet and finally could take no more. With a tired oath he sat up, attempting to dislodge as few of the heavy quilts as possible.

The tiny desk-chair creaked as he set his considerable weight against its joints. He pressed his slippered feet against the bottom rungs and paged through the scores of neat cursive. The yards of letters floated across his eyes but his mind was elsewhere, thinking to the underlying facts of the case.

Information was the most important piece of the puzzle…and too much of it was simply missing. Gregson excelled at taking the leap beyond facts and finding the solution, but Lestrade was a dog for facts. He was a dog that couldn't quit when he was on the scent.

And Lestrade had a _memory_.

They joked about it at the Yard, but Lestrade didn't forget even the smallest detail of a case. He noticed everything down to the tint of paint and the position of the bloodstain…and from such facts the guilty were sent to a British jury. But Lestrade's talent crippled him as much as it helped him. He had facts but he was too hesitant with them to skip a single step. More often than not, he was still filing reports while Gregson was taking the bracelets to the suspects.

Gregson itched for one of his beloved penny cigarettes but his wife did not tolerate them indoors. He breathed through his nose and wished for the inspiration that so often helped him through his cases. Information, information. Lestrade was swimming in the depths of London and hawked his greens and took the money of rich and poor alike and the whole time he was making note inside his memory of the faces he was meeting.

Blue Joe. Three-story Shoe. Big Beard. Crutches O'Hoolihan. Sharky. Gansler the Great. Two-Megs. Large names in the London Underworld, well-known petty criminals of few but artistic skills but so far on the growing roster only Sharky had been the sort to cause murder. Sharky's alibi was still being checked out but it looked unlikely with the times and dates.

These were the names collected so far, and so far there was little to show. The Home Office only cared it if meant enough word got out to start spreading the alarm that the city was not safe for the poor working man. If they didn't solve this problem before the men upstairs noticed, it would go much harder for everyone.

Ironic, Gregson thought, that there were so many different ways to rise in rank. And the least-appreciated and least-loved method must surely rest in the politics that forced a man to be a success…quietly and from the sidelines. Still it boiled down to basic math: A quiet success no one knew about was far better than a failure that everyone knew about.

He set his lips tight against his growing anger. There was nothing for it. He would have to go out. With a silent groan of self-pity he pushed the small chair back and stood as slowly as possible, un-creaking his broad back with his fingers. He rehearsed a speech to his wife, but when he turned to use it he found she was already up and looking back at him. The single illumination of the room's firelight gleamed in her eyes.

Gregson puffed slightly before he gave up. Without a word he just touched her cheek with his hand. "I'll be up, Pet." He said at last. "No need to get up too."

The woman, bless her, slipped as neatly as an eel from the warm bed and tucked her stocking'd feet inside her thickest slippers. As he watched with his mouth open she went to the fire and pulled the large tea-pot off its spot on the grate. With a deft pour and a twist of her padded cotton gloves, Gregson's prize tea-can (the really large one that scoundrel Madison had stolen just before getting sacked for corruption), was full and smoking.

Before he could finish shambling into his (thank God, warm and dry) clothing she had a wedge of good country cheese and the last of the bread inside a flour-sack bag. A judicious knot into the throat made a carry-loop. This late at night he might not be spotted walking the streets with food in his hands like a common labourer. Gregson would just have to risk it and hope the Old Man wouldn't find out one of his men was comporting himself below his station. It was bad enough that he and Lestrade went about clean-shaven instead of displaying the latest styles among the Royals.

"I'm just going to go ask a few questions." He warned. "Just for the record." He knew it was uncouth to involve one's wife with one's work, but she deserved the right to know the sort of cases her husband worked. Lovely woman, she never laughed at him, but she tipped her head to one side. She might have been Isabella giving Columbus permission to sail for unknown waters.

Too apt to be a very amusing parallel. Gregson sighed and slipped his mittened hand through the linen loop.

"I'll head to work once I've finished." He promised, and she held the door for him as he blundered his way out. The hallway was dark and cold, the gas-jets lower than a Dutchman's promise (a turn of phrase Gregson had often heard but never understood). He pulled his heavy scarf over the lower half of his face and winced at the sound of wind kicking cinders against the outer door.

No one was about London right now—proof that even the desperate dogs had some bit of sense between their ears. Gregson kept himself warm by both marching head-down against the wind and chanting a silent litany of the unceasing professional demands of his badge.

His thoughts swirled like the snow-heavy winds, and blew his mind in all directions before letting him return to the subject at hand. Rarely did he feel this out of sorts; there were too many bits and pieces they didn't know about and he was exasperated.

Gregson grumbled to himself as he stamped, wishing the year had not been _quite_ so full of adventure. He didn't like being caught up in a crime that they probably wouldn't solve without a Christmas miracle or outside help (and odds were your choice on which was likelier). He liked it even less that this rash of deaths was not likely to interest anyone of importance. They were just Christmassing men, easily replaced. That made them a perfect choice amongst the low sorts who killed for questionable sport. Gregson had met his share of men who murdered for their own amusement, but they were a thankfully rare sort. Rare if difficult to catch—and at the end of their days they always put the same amount of blame on the Demon Drink.

Violent crime was common….common as cinders in London. Like all the other Inspectors, Gregson had cut his teeth on late-night shifts, solitary patrols and walking nightmares. If he recalled correctly, he had met Lestrade for the first time in a hospital ward, trying to each interview two different victims—two women so badly beaten by their menfolk it was a wonder they could talk or see, but God forbid anyone say anything against the so-called "men" who had done this harm to their own women. Gregson's contempt for such events never loomed far from his mind. He was ever prepared for something worse to happen. He had no particular respect for women or men, nor men over women, and he pitied the starry-eyed philosopher that thought a woman needed extra consideration because she was a woman. They had unequal roles, but the brains between the ears were equal.

But ugly as his reminisced crimes were, they were different from the one he was facing now. Take away the drink and isolate the tremens, and most of those crimes would go away. Calculated murder was different. It operated under a cool brain and strong hand. He was very afraid this was what they were facing.

Gregson hoped they were not dealing with this sort of murdering fiend. He hoped it with all his heart because there was an inevitable…imbalance to justice in these crimes. One life cannot pay for the multiple lives they have taken. In the most poorest of mathematics, one might think of it as future addition: some lives made the equation of life stronger in their absence.

If only that blasted Holmes character enjoyed better health…not that Gregson wasn't grateful, for it did help to have a gentleman on a case even if he was a know-it-all consultant. But he wasn't much good to anyone if he got so caught up in a case that he didn't know to come out of the cold! Gregson still ground his teeth at the memory. Had he only gone to the man a few hours earlier in the day, Mr. Holmes might have been alert and clear-headed enough to advise him. But such was not to be, and that Watson fellow had been running Guard with broth and tea and hot bricks and stern instructions to stay quiet.

His nose burned like a live coal by the time he staggered to the heavy wooden gate of the kip. The tiny windows were dark to a one, but Gregson knew soup-charities and he knocked with authority and the heel of his hand.

After some minutes of stamping and shivering the small peeping window slid open with a wooden screech that made Gregson's teeth ache. He thought of splinters.

"Yes? What is it?" Withered-up black eyes blinked fully alert into the snowy gloom. "We are closed, sir. Come back on the morrow."

Gregson pulled the coverings away from his face. Clouds steamed off his lips. "You remember me, Jacobson."

"Indeed I do." The peep-hole screeched shut again (Gregson ground his teeth to stop their ache of sympathetic vibration), and iron clacked in a series of bolts. The door groaned open, just enough for a man of his size to nip in. Gregson did so without a pause for his dignity. The door clapped shut with all haste but snow blew across the old stone floor and settled under the large wooden tables.

Gregson hadn't realised he was so cold until he heard his teeth chattering. He held his hands over the pale slip of warmth emanating from the massive steam bread-oven and every joint felt as though he had dipped them in fire. The old porter clucked at him and put the snow-broom aside for a pot of tea. It was pitiful stuff, really. Donations from other houses meant used tea-leaves but they were better than nothing at all. Gregson manfully ignored the agony of his hands and clutched the metal cup with all strength.

Jacobson finished with the snow. There isn't much left of a man who has no family when he retires from the badge, but he'd never been a fussy sort. And he was invaluable as a quiet sort of informant, giving his fellow policemen proper news and if he reported a whisper, well, it was something to worry about.

"I imagine the Abbott will be up in a few hours."

"Not sure he should be the one I should be talking with." Gregson admitted. He broke open his bread and cheese and wordlessly passed half to Jacobson. The old man carefully checked the cleanliness of his hands before accepting the gift. He was glad enough to get a meal that didn't come from the kitchen, and a cold supper was a thankful change from the warm but thin gruels from the kettle.

"I'm wondering why it is," Gregson said slowly, "the missing men all came to this kip. They had nothing else in common."

Jacobson shook his head sadly. "It's all I really know about it."

"I'm sure, old fellow." Gregson remained buried in thought until the ersatz supper was a pile of crumbs. "I would like to see the Abbott as soon as possible."

"Well." Jacobson's dark eyes glittered uncertainly. "I'll go wake him up."

"You needn't worry about your position." Gregson said firmly. He placed his warrant card on the table for the world to see.

_OOOOO_

Toby didn't understand how in the world Mr. Lestrade could see the hand before his own face, much less guide the old horse. He shuddered and held himself as still as possible as each snowflake added another grain of weight to their bodies.

The horse sneezed once, sneezed again. Toby thought it stumbled, but Mr. Lestrade stopped dead in his tracks with his rein-hand frozen upright.

Toby waited with his heart pounding in the crushing black cold. He could hear snowflakes landing on the grey backs of their brothers. His ears rang for the filigree sounds.

He strained in the darkness but saw nothing.

"Easy, lad." Mr. Lestrade said softly. His voice was heavy with the need to sleep. "Something's got this old hayburner worried. I can't see what it would be."

_Small wonder,_ Toby thought.

"We're almost at the barn." Mr. Lestrade's voice dropped like a midwinter barometer. "I don't know, lad. There's something about the horse."

He was silent for so long Toby imagined they would be found the next day, frozen white lumps under the snowdrifts.

"No choice." He said at last. "The two of you need out of this mess." He started walking, and the horse lurched forward. Toby gripped the mane hard to keep his balance.

_OOOOO_

The Abbott was a little man, more dried-up than even Jacobson. With that small body came a great deal of authority and he was not accustomed to being disturbed by outsiders at the odd hour. Gregson was so accustomed to rattling the nerve of his interview victims he never paid attention to it. A hard skin was not just a good idea in his profession. It was a saving grace to be callous to the distress of others.

Gregson took the man's wind right out of his sails before he could finish opening his mouth to demand the reason for the visit.

"I felt you might want to speak to the Yard in private, sir." Gregson's Methodism never went much higher than "Bishop" in the church hierarchy. "Before anyone was up and might misunderstand our conversation."

_OOOOO_

The barn was blessedly warm. Toby didn't know how long he had been shivering in the storm, but he felt as though he couldn't stop. Mr. Lestrade did something in the darkness and to Toby's extreme surprise, pulled a pocket-lantern out of the depths of his coat.

"I see better without them right now," he muttered at the boy's expression, almost embarrassed. His eyes were dark and large as plums in the shadowy light, and he carefully put the dark-covering over half the flame. "Hold your hands over that, warm yourself. I'll get you something to eat."

The barn was small on the inside. Toby was well accustomed to the like. Much of the storage space was caught up in the higher rafters and hay was piled neatly up far off the ground where the muck could spoil the dry grasses. He sneezed in the musty warm, and blew his nose on his pocket-handkin.

"There you are." Mr. Lestrade said of the horse. He cleared his throat softly to get its attention, and reached for the rein but the nag set her large ears back and flattened them as evenly as an ironing-board. Mr. Lestrade stopped in his surprise, but did not try to move her again. Her language was clear: _No further. No further than this._

"I don't know what's got into the poor thing." He muttered to Toby. "The only thing I've seen to frighten this walking glue-pot is parade cannon or the smell of blood." He hesitated and lifted his hand again and the horse actually took a step back, her ears rigid.

_OOOOO_

The Abbott didn't know what Mr. Gregson was talking about. The Abbott knew for a fact he ran a respectable kitchen and fed his flock good, filling meals even if they didn't own a plate for their potato. The Abbott was a longstanding member of the Church. The Abbott had a beautifully organised facility in which to support the poor Christians.

The Abbott spoke with a voice firm and calm and self-assured: the perfect gentleman with the perfect confidence.

Gregson with effort kept his voice flat and skeptical. He far preferred to interrogate a person who was afraid of him and what he stood for. Confessions were a simple matter that way. But odd wasn't it, how a man of the cloth was better at receiving confessions than giving them. Just a thread of impatience coloured his demeanor.

The Abbott was wasting the precious time of the Yard.

"If you have nothing to hide, sir, then you have nothing to hide. But misunderstandings can go hard for a man who wants only to do the right thing."

Just that quickly and that easily (Gregson would never completely understand the power his ice-blue eyes carried), the Abbott cracked like an overboiled egg.

_OOOOO_

Gregson practically ran out of the kip. His impotent rage boiled after him like so much washing-day steam. Half down the street he remembered to re-wrap his scarf over his throat and jam his aching hands back into his mittens.

Inspector George was just ambling up the front steps of the Yard, his bear-like form hibernating within his thick coat-layers. "Upon my word, Gregson," he coughed his surprise. "What's happened? Is there a fire?"

"We need to get a wire to the Surreyside Bobbies." Gregson panted. Sweat chilled on his pink face and he mopped at his cheeks without success. "Everyone in Division H. We've got at least one killer—maybe more—at large."

"We can send a wire but no one will be out on a night like this." George pointed out.

"Lestrade is." Gregson tried to calm his breathing but his heart felt like a kettledrum. "He's out there, and I know the man's luck. If he's out there, so is trouble."

George twisted his face. "Aye to that. Who'd be in charge on that side?"

_OOOOO_


	6. Muddled

Toby felt the warmth—or the sudden lack of a storm—soak through his thin shoes and he shivered inside his wet woollens. Around them the stable rested gloomy and dark; sweet-smelling with the familiar tinge of dung and must and dry, neglected things. Although the boy looked sharp, he could see no puddles of melting snow nor feel a draught that proved the barn really was unsafe. Drifts of snow piled upon the foundations, closing in air and some heat.

Mr. Lestrade scowled as he pulled at the oilskin canvas from the nag's broad back. "Roof's sound," he muttered. "They were lying about _that_, but there aren't any horses about. Doesn't make sense…"

He didn't know Toby could hear him, and that his voice sounded odd and rattle-y in the emptiness of the barn, but Lestrade never liked the sound of his own voice in the best of times, and he trailed off, melting into the whisper and clink of the tasks it took to suit up a skittish horse for the night. The nag had opposing notions; the two wrestled with each other in the back while Toby tried to bring warmth to his frozen body.

The boy was putting things together. There were poisons a man could take…poisons that wouldn't kill you if you were careful. His father had taken one in particular when he had the itch to run the night upon the nearest colony of game-birds.

The poison had come in small waxy balls, and his father would take one before going to bed. He would sleep all day and rise at dusk with large, dark eyes to take another grey ball. With only a can of tea he would leave their rooms and he wouldn't come back until dawn.

The first morning or two would be well. The pheasants or quail or whatever his father had snared would be tucked away in his coat and off they would go, selling them to the trusted contacts on the street. They would get a little money—a lot if the birds were collected around holiday—but there was never enough money about, so the two days would lead to a third…and then a fourth.

Each day, Mr. Irish would grow young as his face un-lined; his cheeks plumped under his whiskers and his hands would begin a tremble. His eyes would glitter and grow large. And with the changes to his sight and his face, came the changes to his manners. Instead of warm and gruff he would turn harsh and sharp, impatient with his children and short with his wife—the same wife he kissed in church and danced with in the centre of their rooms while the parades passed through the streets.

"_Never you mind, love."_ His mother would say to him. _"You'll have your own father back soon."_

Toby liked the money the Deadly Nightshade had brought the family. He disliked what the poison had done to his father. He hadn't realised until now that the potion came in other forms. Mr. Lestrade was taking a liquid, not a ball, but the signs were the same.

Unaware of the boy's swirling thoughts, Mr. Lestrade looped the lead to the nag on a near post and had to be satisfied with his compromise. He muttered and pulled a packet of waxed paper from inside his coat, handing the contents over to Toby without a word. "Not enough to brag about, lad." He apologised. "But enough to get us through the night. There's a little stall just off the canal we can visit on the morrow. They sell a hot cheese pie in a buttered crust just big enough for your fists—" He made a size with his hands and Toby's eyes widened. "—and they serve it with a decent schooner1 of hot ginger-beer." His smile was thin and forced. Toby's smile was too long in coming, and the dark eyes turned black. "What is it?" He asked sharper than he meant, and Toby flinched.

Heart in his throat, Toby was glad he wasn't expected to speak. He just shook his head and swallowed.

Their hearts beat in the heat of the barn, poundings at odds with the uneasy stamp of the old horse as it paced its dislike of the place. Man and boy locked eyes, each one trying to read what the other was thinking.

Mr. Lestrade's eyes broke first. There was a tiny white spark as something crossed his mind, and his lips tightened in distaste. Toby's heart sank like a stone in the mudflats.

"I've never struck anyone smaller than myself, lad. I've got more control than that."

No. But his father hadn't. Toby looked down. He studied the shriveled boards, the toes of his drying, thin shoes of shredded leather, and the cuffs of the wool stockings on top. His throat felt tight. He heard Mr. Lestrade heave his breath out in a long sigh.

"Remember him for the good that was there, for there was a lot of it." Wet cloth rustled and Mr. Lestrade put his hand over Toby's right shoulder. Steam curled off the wool. "He took the poison because even though he was a good man, he didn't know a life outside his trade. You do. That's what matters."

Toby finally nodded. He was afraid to think of these things—especially here and now. The darkness of the barn pressed about them, shrinking the light of the candle-lantern into a pin-prick scarce larger than the burning in the copper's eyes. Mr. Lestrade had known his father, he remembered. He and Mr. Gregson, although Mr. Gregson was much coarser in his bearing and for every one sighting of Mr. Lestrade, there was _five_ of Mr. Gregson! After the funeral the two had begun their cruel conspiracy to watch his every move and alert all the new Uniforms to his street-work.

At least it felt cruel. Toby mulled it over his bread as he sat cross-legged before the skinny candle. True to what Toby remembered of the poison, his companion picked at his food but gulped at the watered tea in his drinking-bottle. It must have been awful (Toby couldn't fathom drinking _cold_ tea any more than any Englishman). No, Mr. Lestrade had more control than to strike at a boy for being slow. He couldn't imagine Mr. Gregson being different, though his words cut sharp as shears. But Toby hadn't minded the bite of Gregson's words—he minded being noticed. Being pointed out in the crowd. Simple buzzing2 would soon be impossible. By spring he would be pushed out of all the gangs who let him in. The police knew him too well. He was putting his friends at risk with his own face.

Toby choked down more bread and pretended to pay great interest in his share of the sausage. It was sweet with fennel and nutmeg and clove, almost like a Christmas pudding.

The coppers wanted him on straight tracks, unlike his father. When he thought of it he couldn't think of a single Bobby that _wasn't_ watching him on the street—it wasn't just the Yarders. Why him? He didn't know but knew it was unfair. Christmastime last year and he would have been swimming in coins—there were that many gulls walking about with unprotected purses. But with all the eyes on him—there was no chance but to run respectable jobs like errand boys.

Errand jobs like the one starving him when he ran into Mr. Lestrade in disguise. He supposed he was lucky it wasn't Mr. Gregson—he would have found a job over at the chapel and thrown a bloody full sermon in with tea.

Soft snow collected outside the eves and collapsed with a feather-pillow sound. The horse flinched but no longer paced. There was dull-eyed acceptance in those brown eyes, and Toby knew as well as Mr. Lestrade there would be trouble if they couldn't get the third member of this party to calm. The nag was waiting for an excuse to bolt, and would do it at the first chance.

On the other side of the candle-flame, Toby Irish looked too small and frail. Two years ago this had been a healthy, ornery little street urchin in the bloom of dirty health. Now he was scarce larger and his form had shrunken inward from want. To Lestrade's eyes (which burned painfully from the affect of the drug against the candle) the boy was badly under-nourished. He should have grown more this year, but there was no man in the house (worth mentioning) to stand up to the children.

He wasn't hungry, but he ate his half mechanically. Toby was no fool and he was chafing at what he perceived as coddling and cruelty. Coddling for seeing that he ate more than once a day, and cruelty for putting him in a venture that took him away from his illegal means of working.

Well, they were quite used to that. Crime was bitter and it was always hungry. Children like Toby were quickly snatched up but Toby was a unique case.

"_He'll be the man now." Gregson growled from the other side of his penny-smoke. Anger snapped in the other's eyes because Gregson hated recognising a responsibility outside his comfortable paths. "God help him, for it'll take His help to get the boy out of this bit of a mess."_

_Losing a father was a 'bit of a mess' was it? Lestrade sewed his lips tight against his displeasure and busied himself with crouching down, toying with something in the tuft of brave grass struggling through the pave-stones of the church. They were surrounded in ivy—long, drowning lengths of it, and in the summer air the leaves whispered and whistled as they rubbed against each other. The men were both spooked to be outside of "their" London in inside one of these fey little pockets of savage jungle._

_The summer heat pounded against their heads through their bowlers, wilted their collars to disgrace and dug nails into their shoulders. Their natural resentment thrived in this discomfiting environment. Lestrade wondered again why he had been forced to endure further tests of life in the form of Tobias Gregson. Being put on the same floor as the man was punishment enough…_

…_A lesser man would suggest that Gregson's appalling lack of compassion to a small boy __**might**__ stem from a feeling of guilt. Lestrade might not be a greater man…but he wasn't fool enough to voice such a thing to the much larger man. Gregson was built like a tow-headed bull, but he was by no means as slow or clumsy as one. He allowed his rare moments of rage with great calculation, and Lestrade wasn't about to give him such a moment. _

_The smaller man leaned back on his heels, wilting like his collar and cuffs under the heat while Gregson tried to cool his blood with more tobacco. "I'm wondering if Irish ever told his family what he was doing." He said at last. It was a pathetic attempt at fishing, but that was the nice thing about Gregson's low estimations: He would believe Lestrade was being stupid again, instead of looking for information._

"_Hah." Gregson puffed frantically off his cigarette of cheap blond paper. "You think he would?" He crowed. "The man had enough troubles working the other trade…if anyone breathed word he was helping the police someone would've cut his throat just for a sense of civic duty among the other rascals."_

_Lestrade struggled to ignore Gregson's ugly contempt. It was true enough. Irish might have told someone he was helping watch the woods for things more suspicious than a few poachers…and if he had, the circumstances of his death would be more than a hot day and a fatty heart._

_Someone, one of Irish' nameless backers, had put a fear into the man, forced him out into the heat and out of season to push himself to death. Easiest way to kill a man is to let himself do the work for the assassin. Debts? Not even Irish would have shown the police his debts. Nothing to prove, nothing to say…just a cheap coffin to show for it. Children were fatherless and a woman was without her man, and the Yard was without one of the best informers they'd ever had in three generations. Lestrade felt plenty of pity for himself and the rest of the Yard, but he reserved the lion's share for the widow and orphan. Unlike Gregson, who was thinking of the bloody long view again—and how this lonely death inconvenienced the Yard._

_There were times when he hated Gregson with a passion. Gregson didn't care about anyone. His fellow Yarders were means to the end and little more. He could turn off his duty and put it on his hat-hook when he got home. If he thought about Lestrade—or any of the Yarders—it was in the "we" versus "they" category—"they" being all of London. If Lestrade died tomorrow, it would be the same as this moment, right now, with Gregson smoking and wondering how to recover from the inconvenience._

Lestrade forced his mind to the present. He rather enjoyed dwelling on his reasons for despising Gregson. Gregson made it easy for him too.

It said something about that Dr. Watson (who seemed a decent enough fellow if crippled by his fine sensibilities), appeared to be put-off at Gregson's elephantine skin. Watson was in a large crowd.

Lestrade took a deep breath, pulling it in through his nose. Toby had curled into a catlike little ball on the other side of the painfully bright lamp. He was asleep or close to. Lestrade attempted to keep quiet. He knew the child needed sleep. He also knew he needed to think without help.

Christmassers garroted for at least half their Christmas money. Missing Christmas-men. There was a tie there, and it was all a chancy, disturbing thing. He didn't like it. The fact that Gregson didn't like it either…well…that meant Lestrade wasn't imagining things. Gregson didn't let a tender heart get in the way of a case.

The nag shuffled and stamped her hoof against the boards; the pocket-lamp shivered and jostled Lestrade out of himself again. Without thinking he rose to his feet, and tired as he was, didn't think of how the horse was rolling her eyes until he was too close for comfort. An iron-shod projectile whistled through the air and the small man stepped back with a stifled curse.

"What is the matter with you?" He whispered under his breath. He didn't want to wake the lad for several good reasons—his sainted mother swore that children didn't grow unless they were asleep, and he didn't want to see Young Toby achieve no better than his Regulation Height.

Thump.

Stomp.

The old nag lifted her grey head, and what was left of the candle-light shone silver streaks against her muzzle.

Lestrade set his mouth and rested his hands on the velvety flank, waiting until the trembling body calmed—one degree at a time. It took a long time and he was worn to the nub when she was quiet enough to step away.

"Never you mind, gel." Lestrade slipped into the Gipsy Cant while he spoke to her—horses seemed to like that way of talk. Not for the first time, he wondered if Gips talked the way they did for the sake of the horses. "I'll see to it." He slipped the feed-bag over the elderly horse's nose and stroked it until the large, delicate lips found the oats and treacle inside. He took a deep breath, for until the poor thing had scented food she had been ready to run.

Treacle was a godsend to those who worked with horses, he thought for not the first time. It was a small trick his father had taught him, but Lestrade worked very hard to avoid thinking of his father at every opportunity.

_Treacle smells of iron. They'll smell that and be calm, because there's sweetness in it. _

Lestrade was weary and his eye-lids were bearing sand-grains to judge by the feel. But he remained standing where he was, stroking the broad old nose as whufflings and chewings filled the boarded space.

The whole time, she'd never stopped staring at the space above their heads against the back of the room.

Lestrade wasn't smart enough to be too suspicious at this point. He was crippled by a responsibility to a young boy and now that he didn't have to be afraid of his freezing to death in the snow, his own sense of relief was crushing him. He wasn't thinking much further than rest for himself. After a short soothing period he gave a final pat and went to that pool of darkness. It was a small hay-bin, and smelled sweet and comforting to his own childhood memories. To burrow into those dry stalks meant warmth and safety. Toby needed better warmth than what he was getting by the candle.

Lestrade huffed softly as he heaved his body up to the top of the nailed-in ladder at the door. His nose tickled at the scent of dry sweet hay and ripe seed-heads. It wasn't until the hay-stalks danced before his eyes that he realised the depth of his fatigue and he stood there unmoving, wondering what his best action would be.

Move the hay to Toby, he decided. He couldn't move a boy Toby's size if he was dead-weight, but he could move the hay and pack it around him, keep him warm.

No man was perfect. Men achieve imperfection most assuredly when they are measuring their actions against their peers. Lestrade was concentrating on his goal and not on the possibility that his mind was muddled by opium and exhaustion. He managed this phantasy up to the point where he climbed to the short wooden ladder's top of the hay-crib, and scooped up a one-armload of crackling hay.

A moment later he was falling backwards and trying everything he could to keep from falling on top of his thick neck. Toby stirred in his sleep and mumbled but otherwise never noticed how his benefactor clutched the rungs in his hands and tried to breathe and tried equally hard not to curse or scream.

Long minutes passed through a metronomic eternity as Lestrade fought for discretion. In the light of his pocket-lamp the first of twelve dead men stared back. Not all of them had shut eyes against their deaths.

Twelve.

Twelve men.

The missing Christmas-men…and then some. Men who hadn't been reported missing.

He would have known them anywhere, these thin old men with withered up flesh about their finger-bones, the years of privation drawing taught bowstrings of skin against their skull-cheeks. These were poor men, with the look of the outdoors on their stamp.

It was a damned gallery of murder inside a small stable, and a young boy had fallen to sleep not ten feet from the nearest corpse.

_**Stamp**_. The nag had her opinion.

Lestrade finally collected his breath. In the overwhelming nature of the murders it was not easy. There were no Constables to command. Nothing but themselves. He struggled to the bottom floor-board and reached out with shaking hands.

"Toby." He rasped like a dying man—yes, he knew what that sounded like. "Toby," He urged. "Wake up."

1 One-third of a pint. A measure known to women, children, and the moderate.

2 Pick-pocketing


	7. Cold

**Scotland Yard:**

"It's the—" Tobias Gregson only just missed saying an inappropriately ripe word. "—The Abbott." There. It wouldn't do to curse a man of God, even if they didn't belong to your religion. "The Abbott." He repeated and drew breath.

George was still waiting for an explanation as to why he'd been shouted down from a freezing London street into an equally freezing London alley-corner. Gregson was in a fuss, that would be obvious to the blind. The big man hunched over, raking in great frozen gulps of air while sweat frosted on his face.

"Here, now, Gregson," he said at last. "I'm sure I don't know what you're so excited about, but it can wait a—"

"It's those Christmassers." Gregson took another breath. His face looked less likely to pop now, but his face was still a shocking red. "The ones…disappearing." He stopped and swallowed hard, wiping sweat off his forehead.

"Ah." Gregson knew about that…most of them did.

"We need to talk." Gregson stated. "Your office. Where are the maps?"

There were countless Maps of London at the Yard. They were in various degrees of accuracy and penmanship, and were always getting "borrowed" from desk to desk amongst those Yarders needing help with their memories.

You could borrow a man's files on a shared case; you could pay one of his personal informants for information to suit your own career; you could even borrow your mate's tea-can with impunity (so long as you didn't actually steal it, then you'd be dead), but using a man's maps of London without his permission was simply not done.

"What happened to that drawing of the train-yard?" Gregson grumbled under his breath as he pushed aside a battered copy of "_Lost Beauties of the English Language_". "It flirts all over the Yard!"1

"That's because _Jones_ drew it." George pointed out. "Missed his career as an architect, he did."

"Hmph." Gregson growled under his breath. "Or as a blind beggar. Especially if he keeps drawing square miles of London within the size of a foolscap."

"Too bad Lestrade isn't here." George grimly joked as they rattled through another panel of Greater London's charts. "He'd tell us who was who in which jurisdiction right off."

"Well, not everyone has a bloody sideshow freakish memory." Gregson sounded like a bear as he shuffled his fingers down _another_ maze of ink while George pretended not to be amused. Lestrade's hard-trained ability to recall case details down to the least _minutiae_ in his memory oft-threatened to drive his rival straight off the tracks—it was really the only thing Lestrade had that Gregson couldn't best.

One might think that a person could be satisfied to be overwhelmingly 99% superior to a rival and allow him that pitiable one-percent, but not Tobias Gregson. It was the terrible knowledge of one tiny scrap of unfinished business that would not, could not ever be resolved—rather like that horrid poem about Kubla Khan. Gregson had read it all the way to the bottom once before learning too late the poet was interrupted by a salesman who completely spoiled his train of thought. The verse had been a canker festering in Gregson's grudge-nursing brain ever since, to the point that he had a personal boycott against everything Coleridge wrote.

The only good news was that upstart Holmes was just as infuriated at Lestrade, even though it was because he said Lestrade always had the facts even though he never knew what he had. _"A postman who can't read!"_ Holmes had exclaimed at the top of his voice. Gregson was willing to set aside his offence at the insult of a fellow copper within his delight at the brilliance of the complaint. Holmes was a true gentleman—he knew how to bite.

"Where's the map of the square mile?" George wondered amidst the fluttering of papers.

Gregson frowned in tired confusion. "We don't need that." He protested. "He's nowhere near the Lord Mayor's beat."2

"S'not that, I had some notes in the back…" George muttered and mumbled as he paged through the large and fiendishly folded pages.

"If you wrote that on my maps, you'd best have used a pencil." Gregson warned icily. Even the mildest of inks would work through the other side of papers in time.

"There we go…" George was a brave man. He could ignore Gregson—at least temporarily. "Railway Police…is there any chance we should call them?"

Gregson wasn't certain, and said so.

"Bow Street's out." George muttered. "All right—here. He was headed to Sir Roland's, yes?" A thick forefinger blunted a heavy line across the slick paper. "There's an intersecting line. Part of this goes through the Rail Police. But the parts here and here…that's…" He squinted at the strangeness of his own writing. "Puttock. G. P. Puttock."

One didn't forget that sort of name—not even people who lacking freakish memories. "He's the one who takes all those night shifts, isn't he?" Gregson scrubbed at his chin. "Yes…sensitive to sunlight since taking the shilling3, and everyone pretends he just likes to work at night so they won't have to dismiss him." He shook himself out of his reverie. "Where're the wire-slips? I'm going to blanket every station within two miles of Sir Roland's."

"Just what are you going to say on those slips?" George wanted to know. "Anything sounding like an alert could warn the wrong person. If the Abbott's right we have to think about some corruption in the ranks."

Gregson snarled again. "We dealt with corruption in the ranks before—I'm unlikely to forget those days!"

George sewed his lips shut, momentarily cowed at his mistake.

One didn't remind the old coppers of the old days.

Lestrade had forgotten how deeply a child could sleep when warm and fed. It was like shaking a rag doll. Toby's eyes remained shut and his limbs were limp as seaweed and finally the detective risked barking his name.

Toby woke up by flinching backwards in fear—that was quite all right; Lestrade needed the boy to wake up and fear sharpened the will to live.

"We're not safe here," he cut it to the quick. "We've got to get out of here."

_What is it?_ Toby mouthed the words, something he hardly ever did.

"There's dead men in here." Lestrade pulled the child to his feet—the small body was heavy and worn—worn to the woof and he didn't know how far he could go with him, but staying here wasn't the smartest thing to do.

Toby gasped a breath in his lungs and swayed, trying to wake up too fast. He clutched at Lestrade for balance and the man held him by the forearms.

"Look, I'm getting the old haybag. You get on the back and you listen to what I have to say, got it? Good lad."

Lestrade staggered backwards, the building snow throwing his weight against his inturned foot. He stumbled, finally falling. Each step they carved out of the snow was another mark of death if they didn't get far enough away before the storm ended.

**Scotland Yard:**

"The problem is proving a tie." Gregson huddled inside his layered coat. About he and Inspector George the snow fell like spinning plates; flake after flake came down so thick the crystalline branches were actually tangling within their brothers like frozen glass spiders within their webs. The world was illuminated blurs of white within satin darkness. Even though the two grizzled veterans knew where the factory stacks stood in the skyline, they couldn't see a single clay pipe from the whirling white reflecting the gasping illumination of lamp.

"We've been patrolling the streets for bloody years and crime against the Christmassers have been a part of Christmas." George puffed out his breath—the better to keep from sucking a dirty snowflake within his mouth in the dark. Their feet ploughed furrows in the deserted streets and snow swirled about their wrapped ankles like frozen sand-grains. It was too cold to melt against their hot bodies. It remained loose and slick under their foot-falls. Their soles were beaten leather and slick; each man relied on the other to correct their balance against a crippling fall.

The men who went missing, well, they went to the kips and one of Gregson's blows4 said there were three men following the Christmassers. They stood about the kips and the bread-lines and they were paying a bit too much attention to the poor men who were selling the Christmas greens. They would be gone from anyone's view when the Christmassers went missing, but that couldn't quite prove they were involved, did it?" He sighed. "Men with boys weren't vanished off. But men who went alone…well, they haven't been found.

Gregson's higher degree of intelligence had already analysed the minute details of the cases and while he could find no precedence for a man with a young assistant disappearing…he had a feeling in his gut. The feeling went fairly beyond what he preferred to rely on.

The feeling wasn't always correct; he could shoot off, like an arrow ahead of the archer's stroke, but in this instance the dread of being wrong was far weaker a sensation than the feeling of being arrogant and silent.

He couldn't take the chance. Possibly he would be conveying a deep insult to Lestrade for implying he needed a man to watch his back…but at the same time, a young boy was involved. Partridge Irish died too young, and with his work to the Yard unfinished. There was no need to send his son after him. Gregson honestly couldn't risk it.

Lestrade almost cursed out loud instead of under his breath. Snow fluttered against his mouth and the old horse snorted at his side. Above the horse Toby coughed—the only sound outside of the whistle the boy was able to create.

It was the cold. Among some of the folks, the freezing dry actually _helped_ the lungs what were damaged. Not here. Toby was young, his lungs were sound, and if Lestrade remembered his mother's teaching, the boy had plenty of moisture to help protect his breath against damage. If he was coughing it was a sign of deeper problems. Problems that needed attention in a warm room with a kettle steaming in the inglenook.

They were so many miles from that solution that he didn't flatter himself on their chance of getting there.

"Not much further, lad." He said over the swirling storm. Ice dashed against his face, slid under his eye-lids. "Just stay strong there. You'll be in a warm spot soon enough." Toby needed to believe he would get to that warm spot; he needed to believe that even if he arrived to that warm spot alone.

1 Flirt—to move rapidly from place to place, like a bee among flowers. Gregson's love of precision would not use 'flit' which meant to _remove_ from one dwelling place to another.

2 Scotland Yard dealt with the Greater London, while the square mile of London city proper was under its own police force.

3 Queen's shilling; accepting the Army.

4 informants


	8. A fortnight

A snowstorm was the worst possible place in which a man could flee with a young boy who was already too small, too under-nourished, too weak in stamina to do the work of a lad half his age in the country. If the man was full of the deadly belladonna in the bargain, the odds went from grim to hopeless in very short order.

Lestrade _hated_ the drug. He possibly hated it as much as did the Gipsies who taught him the trick—initially it was a trick of disguise, to turn his already dark eyes into misleading pools of black.

_"You'll become different,"_ they'd warned him in inflections suited more to Shakespeare, _"don't turn your back on't."_ and he'd soon learnt what that meant. Under the belladonna his body trembled. He vibrated from nervousness. His thoughts failed to settle and worst of all, if his misjudged the dose, _his memory slipped._ Memory was one of the few advantages he owned in this world. He depended on it as much as Gregson depended on his own cleverness.

Belladonna frightened him even before he hit the stage of the hallucinations or the confusion of depth and perception. It was a deadly thing, plain and simple.

Toby Irish faltered against the bite of wind and snow against their faces. Their only light died when the wind pulled its life right out of the glass casing. Man and boy didn't like to think of winds strong enough to do that. A heart-beat later even the smoke-smell was tossed away from their noses, sent high above the distant trees in the field.

The nag snorted anxiously but she was calmer away from the scent of the blood. Lestrade had one hand on Toby's shoulder, one hand wrapped within the reins close to the muzzle and he hoped devoutly nothing would make him slip in this snowy jungle. Just as he was fretting about what would happen if he lost his footing and tugged the nag down with him into a panic, thus resulting in a deadly trampling for both, Toby slid on the snowy grass and fell hard on his left side. Lestrade gasped icy air in his lungs out of reflex, for to fall upon one's side meant a greeting to death in his conservative upbringing..and hastily pulled the boy to his feet. Toby was shaking his head from side to side, his cap lost. Lestrade had twin horrors from the knowledge that the boy was now less protected and there was something to leave a trail. In the swirling snow even his night-sighted eyes saw nothing of the cap.

_What do I do?_ He asked himself as flakes of deadly mica gouged paper-cut wounds into his cheeks. _What do I do?_

He didn't mean it to happen, but unbidden his drugged brain created a terrible image of the past. His first case as a Constable of the Yard, his first case with a boy Toby's age. The sweep-master had tied a rope around the leg of his apprentice in order to drag him back down if he were sulky. The boy had gotten stuck in a flue. In the tugging of the rope, the child's neck was broken. It had taken half the day to break down the bricks to haul the tiny corpse out, black with the soot that the master could sell for easy money…the tiny, monkey-withered feet had been pulled first out of the broken bricks of the chimney. A sweep didn't wear shoes. Why would they? Lestrade's mind had managed to stay cool like ice until the last of the small corpse had been revealed in the broken pile. And then a chance trick of the tiny body's clothing rubbed against the piled brick. It wasn't a boy-child it all, it was a girl-child, clad in boy's breeches to hide her sex.

Lestrade had lost his control for the first time since he'd joined the duty, and it was Davids who'd found him on his knees by the gutter that fed the Lost River of Fleet, sending the soot-blackened contents of his belly into the gutter already full of the cobblestone grime.

"_How long have you worn that-there badge, young fellow?"_

"_A fortnight and four, sir." Lestrade said it without thinking, but the Inspector was chuckling lightly without the least bit of humour to it._

"_Eighteen days? You've gone far, lad. Far." The lean old Welshman settled the long sticks of his bones to resting as he settled by Lestraede's side._

"_Your pardon, sir. I've forgotten myself."_

_This was the response that had been drilled into him from the first day of his duty. Even if it meant your post on the Force, never imply however indirectly that your supervisor might be at fault._

_Davids only pursed his mouth into a tiny O. _

_What happened next was outside the limits of Lestrade's mind._


	9. What Happens at Dawn

Inspector Davids didn't laugh at PC Lestrade. He didn't mock him or even harrumph and tell him to buck up, there was a job to finish and duty to perform, Constable. He just shifted the weight of his long, long body to one side and busied himself with a sip out of his tea-flask. It was an horrendously expensive ceramic canister insulated in an embossed leathern case with his initials stamped to the side. Whispered legend among the fellows swore the canister was a gift from the Lord Mayor.

Lestrade was ashamed. Weakness was never tolerated in this world. He stood up a little too quickly and pushed his toes into the concrete through his cheap cowhide soles, breathing hard.

"Bloody business." Davids told him, knowing it would surprise the young man. "Yes, I know what I said. It is bloody business. Bloody awful." he took another sip.

"Do you mean...it's murder, sir?" Lestrade blindly guessed he had a right to be confused, for 'bloody business' meant blood shed in a crime and not actually a preventable death.

"In the eyes of the _law_, no. In the eyes of _London_, I wouldn't presume to say." Davids was thoughtful. His strange, fey eyes moved about the alleyway as if something most interesting was right there. Lestrade glanced about him, but all he could see was the fog of London, making strange patterns as it caught the air-currents between intersection and open mews. The lower portions were more active than the higher portions, and the thready wisps imitated a silent beast made of water and smoke and poison.

Lestrade shivered inside his heavy wool uniform.

"He'll be charged, no mistake." Davids meant the sweep's master (who had a school of starvelings to use). "He'll stand before the Court, and he'll argue his case, and he'll pay a fee and perhaps, just perhaps, he'll be put behind the bars."

"It's his rightful home." Lestrade choked.

"Not for us to decide, Lestrade. It's our duty to act, but our opinions matter not."

Lestrade unconsciously prickled. If anything proved the Inspector was Welsh, it was how he said his name, with slightly rounded vowells. It still jarred his composure to hear a reminder from home.

"It is the Law that will decide his fate," Davids continued, "But the Law cannot decide unless we are there to present the accused, and our un-opinionated witness."

"Yes, sir." Lestrade took a foolishly deep breath against the thickness of the atmosphere and held it in. Davids was right. Even corrupt trials couldn't get started without evidence. The police were the first steps forward in the wars of crime and justice that tried to shake the city apart. That was where they did the most good, not huddled up in shock because something looked too awful to take.

He took a deep breath, scrambled in his brain for some sort of comfort, and latched upon one of his grandmother's old prayers. He recited bits and pieces of it to himself until it was all a tangle, but it distracted him enough that he could concentrate on his task. Children died. He didn't need to be reminded. He'd helped dig the graves of his little brother and sisters, hadn't he? Children died.

And Davids was correct. Opinions didn't matter; he didn't have to like it. Just prevent it with his actions.

Years later, a living child went stiff in his arms and started coughing.

* * *

Lestrade clutched at the boy in a flood of panic. The urchin was struggling in his arms in the force of his rebelling lungs. It could be just a reaction to the ice in the air; it could be the start of something deeper. The detective didn't know. Underfed, undergown children didn't dodge pneumonia.

Toby Irish finally stopped and held still, panting into his sleeve. He was exhausted.

"Not much longer, lad." Lestrade hoped he wasn't lying. It had been a long, long time since he'd had to retrace his steps from memory, and it was too dark and snowy to cheat with landmarks. "There's a safe place up ahead. And I'm putting you-"

He slipped. Something gave or moved beneath the heel of his short boot, and they both sprawled into the snow. Toby choked snow out of his mouth and Lestrade held on tighter than ever, less shocked at the snow going down his neck than the weight of the child against his chest. _Too light for his age...too light for his height. How much does he eat?_

"It's all right." He gasped out loud. Behind them the nag was stock-still. The old warrior was waiting for orders and without the stench of blood or the wrack of cannon, she was placid. "I'm putting you and the old haybag in a safe-spot." He felt small, thin fingers clutch his arms through the clothing. "Toby, it's all right, I promise," Lestrade persisted. "I'll be back for you both."

Toby was gasping for air through his fear. Lestrade felt the smaller heart thrumming against his own.

"I promise," Lestrade made this as calm and firm as he could allow his voice. "I'll be back for you. But it isn't safe for you to stay with me. I've got to get help and that means walking at least a good two mile back to London until I can find the train lines."

They fumbled together, trying to regain balance with heavy limbs and the encumbrance of cold, wet snow and wind that laughed to drive ice into their eyes and mouths and lungs.

And Toby started coughing again.

* * *

Inspector George looked up at Gregson's return, and a thoughtless brush of his hand sent papers everywhere. He grabbed them hastily with a curse.

Gregson grunted. The big man was red-faced under his silky yellow hair. George hoped against hope it was from the unseemly heat coming off the furnace.

"The wire went through," Gregson told the other man. "But that's about all. The storm's even worse on Surreyside. The roads are blocked from snowdrifts; it'll take hours to clear worst of the trods."

"Is that the best they can do?"

"Actually, no. I overheard Johnson and Merrick—you remember Lanner's men from the old days? They were putting up bets on how soon the country folk would be putting out the boards and tamping the snow tight against the roads so they could put the skids under the waggons." He pulled out a penny fag and sought his light. "The odds are between dawn and ten o'clock tomorrow."

"What about the rails?" George pondered the unthinkable.

"The RP can help and are willing to do so, so long as the help is on Rail property." Gregson recited verbatim the facts.

"Lovely."

"Got to stop getting your hopes up on moonbeams." Gregson grumbled at him. The rancor was at the situation, not his mate, so George let it go. It would be nice if something was important enough for the rival departments' cooperation. A missing policeman and a young boy in mufti under a snowstorm just wasn't important enough.

"Now what?" George asked point-blank.

"Now we do what we're told. Stay out of it and wait for the reports."

"Mmmmn." George said. His large eyes narrowed to slits. "And how are we going to stay out of it?"

Gregson snickered. His thick fingers moved gracefully over the soft paper tube of shredded tobacco. "I might have a few ideas," he admitted. "But it means we have to be very sure of what we're doing.

"Which," he added sternly, "Means asking you a few questions about the beat between here and Surrey."

"Ask away." George vowed. "I can't say I know what you want, but I'll try."

"Honest enough." Gregson assured him. He could afford to be magnanimous; George was a secondary player in the game and didn't threaten his status in the case in the very least. "Grab another pot of tea, would you? I doubt we'll have reason to sleep for a while."

* * *

Toby was warm.

_Toby was warm._

The boy didn't believe it.

He opened his eyes, expecting to be buried under another layer of snow and chaff, but instead of darkness he could see dusty grey. Sweet hay tickled his nose and he clapped his hand over his face just in time. The sneeze hurt a great deal and he sniffed loudly before remembering it was wise to be quiet.

A horse nickered almost against his ear, and if Toby hadn't been born dumb, he would have yelled at the top of his lungs. He shot upright—until a wall of hay and powdery snow fell over him and mostly down his back.

Toby stopped himself from turning rabbit, and gasped for breath, which made him sneeze again. Cold air brushed his nose and he tilted his eyes up, taking in thin slips of pale blue light. Snow-dust trickled over his face.

He was inside a hay-stack?

It was warm. Toby had been forced to bury himself in hay before—but always in illicit trips to back-alley mews and stables. He had thought the wooden shelters had been the best way of keeping warm, but wrapped inside dry hay...he couldn't be warmer. Behind him the old nag was resting on the ground and sleeping deeply.

Toby twisted his head as slowly as he could to blink at the battered old horse. She was actually twitching in her sleep, it was so deep.

Where was Mr. Lestrade?

He couldn't see him anywhere.

The boy tried to think. The old nag was asleep on the ground. Horses didn't do that for more than a few hours at a time, and old horses needed sleep less than young ones.

If Mr. Lestrade had left, he must be coming back soon.

But how long had he been gone?

Toby thought about lifting his head up through the thin curtain of snow, but the icy thread of air made him pause. He was warm. He didn't want to be cold again.

And they had been running from something...did he want to stick his head out where he could be seen?

Toby buried his chin in his hands, wondering what to do.

* * *

Not far away, Lestrade was wondering the same thing.

Getting the horse and child into the safe spot had been one thing; the snow drifts had swallowed their tracks in the snow and left smooth caps over the fields of hay. The plan had been to hurry himself down the slightly thinner snowdrifts in the road, make for the rails, and get to the nearest telegraph station that was still working.

Things had worked well enough until dawn drove the darkness away.

Realising the trouble, Lestrade had risked moving faster but a quarter-hour later he was barely closer to the rails, there were no snow-clearing crews in sight, and the morn had arrived.

He was dangerously close to collapse from the physical strain of wading through knee-deep snow and its cold against his thin clothes, but that wasn't what truly frightened him, nor what made him helpless against the killers that he knew would be looking for them.

Dawn had risen, and with it had died Lestrade's advantage of the night-sighting belladonna.

Lestrade was now blind.


	10. Chapter 10

The old nag gave heat like a coal fire. Toby Irish vowed to seek the stables the next time he was caught out in the weather, but he was too worried to sleep or stay in the warm hay.

He took a deep breath and struck through the lacey curtain of snowflakes. They were dry and burned as he waded out. Behind him the old nag snorted. She was rested and could not fight her instincts to stand. That was what a horse did; when they were frightened they ran. She needed to be free to run. She rose up, her warm breath against his nape, and followed him hoof after foot. The two stepped delicately across an uncertain land.

The boy coughed into his woollen sleeves, for the tiniest crystals drove needles down his throat and into his lungs. His eyes streamed, and that hurt too. When he freed himself, he stopped at the foot of the snow-clad haystack and wondered where to move. He was ferociously hungry. He swept up a handful of snow-wreathed seed-heads off the hay and chewed. Barley hay was a rarity to England, and lucky for him Mr. Lestrade had put them inside a mound full of grain-heads instead of the usual grass with forbs. The grains crunched sweet under the teeth on his right (he had a tooth on the left going bad).

The urchin frowned, using the awning of his brow to shield his eyes from the worst of the glare of rising sun against the snow. Sunlight in London was...fey. The city was clad in soot and cloud. Toby chewed hard and fast, thinking. His father couldn't bear a sunny day in London (not that London was ever sunny). There was that time...

Toby winced, thinking of a sour memory. His father fumbling home, dazed and blinded from a snowfall not too different from this one... If Mr. Lestrade was taking the poison, and it was affecting him like it did his father, could he see at all?

Behind him the nag moved up and he hopped forward, not wanting a heavy hoof on his foot. The nag kept moving and she didn't stop her path through the snow until Toby clutched at the harness and the old horse stopped dead.

The boy looked up at the weathered old lady. Her eyes were filmy blue with a slow-growing blindness. But she was gentle, and warm, and had kept him alive as he slept in the hay. He studied her long lashes, gilded with broken wings of snowflake. On her broad neck he could see grey-silver scars from terrible wounds.

He reached up and patted her neck. Anyone else would make a soothing sound or hum. Toby couldn't make any sound at all. So he patted her broken hide for an extra long time, hoping that would help. Her breath was cozy against his cold cheeks.

He clucked at her with his tongue, hoping she knew that sound as a "come on" and could have cried with relief when she obeyed. He was afraid to be alone. He clucked again, hands tight on the reins, and they pulled away from their shelter.

The snow had covered Mr. Lestrade's tracks, but not completely. Pale wrinkles showed the way. Toby followed the wrinkles. He thought they might be headed for the road, but he couldn't see anyone in the whiteness.

No road this close to London would be clogged with snow for long. It was just impossible.

A flock of crows screamed as they swept overhead.

Toby stumbled and lost his balance and the old horse was timid, but she was more afraid of being alone than the ground she could not see. She stayed close as cockleburrs on his side, and together they fought hard to get to the smoother plane of the snowy road. Toby was sobbing in relief when they made it without injury. The nag smelled his fear. She hovered even closer, her ears flat.

Toby made the only noise he could make, and patted her hide over and over. The poor thing was more scar than smooth. Terrible. Toby was frightened at the thought that she would leave him, for he was too small to hold her reins if she decided to bolt.

* * *

"All right." Gregson pulled a new map in for inspection. "If I wire the-" He looked up to his cartographic partner to find himself talking to thin air. George was facing the wall and not paying a bit of attention to him. The big man barely managed to clap his lips shut, trapping the obscenities that wanted to escape. "_George_!" He whispered.

George was staring off into space. He shook himself, catlike despite his size even though his gaze never dropped from its reverie. "Gregson," his voice dropped to a low hiss. "We'd best find your man, and quickly."

Gregson opened his mouth to ask why, but his words stuck in his throat.

George wasn't staring at the wall. He was staring at the bottom of the door. And a shadow was shifting on the other side.

Gregson's eyes narrowed. He'd never had patience for corruption in the ranks, but evesdroppers were even lower in his contempt.

For a big man, he could move without a sound.

A squawk and a flutter of fat limbs under many-patched cloths greeted his surprise exit. A tin pail clattered across the floor, spilling cleaning rags and vinegar. Gregson assessed the charwoman with the cold eye that gave no forgiveness or compassion for man or woman, elder or child. Lestrade might, but Gregson considered that a fatal weakness for the duties of the badge. In his experience everyone was guilty of something, and his Hanging-Judge countenance encouraged a quicker confession.

"Well, good-morning, madam." He said coolly. Whilst he couldn't smell gin on her person, she had dirty hair that defied grooming, so the knotted brown bun was her pitiable attempt at vanity. Her eyes were watery with pinkeye inside the bright face of a drinker. She likely saved the comforts for the night when she was home, to help her sleep. Her spine was bent with some sort of injury or birth-defect, so he was positive she needed something to get through her night peacefully.

Charwomen were not like other workers. They were paid by the hour—a ridiculous conceit to some of the authorities. They tended to spend a few hours a day amongst their clients, and if she had managed to get a post at the office, it was due to some sort of connexion...that was interesting. If anyone was in a position to be a useful, _cheap_ spy, it would be a charwoman—assuming of course that the woman had the required level of brains for the task.

Interesting and troubling for Lestrade's chances of coming out of this case with a whole skin.

"And what, may I ask, would you be doing? The night-staff already cleaned this door, madam. I know. I was there."

* * *

They found Mr. Lestrade at the train-tracks.

He was slumped into the ditch below the rails, safely away from a crushing death but he wasn't moving and his head was down, almost completely face-first into the snow. Toby forgot to breathe as he stumbled through the drift in numb feet (and numb feet meant he couldn't feel depth).

The Inspector was breathing and his body was warm beneath his layers, but his eyes were shut and a streak of blood had dried inside a tear against his scalp. Toby shook him, and saw out of the side of his eye a red streak in the snow. He timidly put his hand through it, and felt something sharp. A chip of rock or bit of metal? The rails were full of both. Mr. Lestrade had made an unlucky step and fallen hard. On his way down he'd scraped his head open on that sharp bit but he'd knocked his senses clean out of his head. Toby was so used to injuries of this ilk he was barely worried. One either woke up or they didn't, but Mr. Lestrade's colour was fairly good. Charley Ruth had turned the grey of oysters when he'd fallen out of a second-story job. The police came and the cart took him away but he never came back to the streets because he never woke up.

And Mr. Lestrade heard him. "Who's't?" He mumbled.

Toby clicked with his tongue, T-O-B-Y in Code.1 It was surely an accident that the old nag snorted as if in greeting.

"Toby, you sshhould be in the hay where it'sth warm." Lestrade scolded tiredly. His eyes were still tightly shut and he suddenly shivered. "Do you know where we are?"

Toby wilted, and tapped N-O on Mr. Lestrade's hand.

The nag snorted, and stamped her hooves. Toby blinked up, his own eyes dazed by the burning white of the snow. The old horse was not happy that Toby had left her on the other side of the ditch. She moved her head back and forth and stamped slowly.

Mr. Lestrade lifted his head and grimaced in pain. Toby gripped his arm as he tried to lift it to his head. "What's wrong?" He muttered. "I can't see a thing."

Toby was about to communicate that he did not know, but the nag moved in her restlessness, and the boy could see her body had been blocking the view of the slope. A cluster of dirty-looking men headed their way.

He didn't know if that was good or bad.

* * *

If hysteria was a sign of profit, Gregson would have made Chief Inspector years ago.

"We'll send her on to London when the roads are clear," George rubbed his face, exhausted. The high-pitched shrieks of the woman's curses and protestations still buzzed in their sore ears. "I give her a few hours before she starts to feel the need for her pain. She'll be more likely to talk after that." _Not to mention a few charges of accessory to murder..._

"Paid to spy but only on the visitors? What bloody worthless assignment would that be?"

"No one notices a worker." George shrugged helplessly. "But you have to admit it's clever. We don't get visitors that much over here."

"I'm surprised. Wasn't this once a main highway for robbery, vice, theft and all sorts of things against the Ten Commandments?"

"Of _course_ it was. It was a Roman Road." George was indignant. "But most of the crimes have nothing to do with this side of the train-lines! All the excitement's moved across the brook where the real estate's putting up three tenant buildings and one new drunkary with every year!"

"Time to think faster." Gregson spread the pertinent maps before the cool eyes of the station's only Inspector. "The kip off High Street—that is to say, the High Street on the Lambeth side-"

Mr. George nodded.

"-it goes by the name of St. John the Baptist most of the time," Gregson tapped a fat fore-finger at a tiny spot close to a dark line that meant an ancient and well-established road. "It was used in the old days as a stopover from the countryside. The thief-takers of old employed its facilities quite often, even had a few holding cells in the cellars, and old reports have it there are cloisters for people seeking sanctuary from either the law or the lawless."

"Do go on." George prompted. "This kip has a tie to the missing Holly-men?"

"This kip has been favoured by Holly-men since James the First." Gregson tapped his finger again; he wasn't afraid but he was angry. "Our predecessors took the Abbotts on their word that the cells and the cloisters were dismantled when Mayne took the policeman's throne,2 but what if they didn't? You know how those Men of God are. They think because they perform works in His name that gives them a warrant to play barrister with the meanings of words."

"Are you saying the Holly-Men would be in there?" George asked skeptically.

"No. Two holding cells wouldn't hold that many men, and the men were all seen leaving for the country-side after they ate. It was the last time they were ever seen; ergo, something happened in the countryside. Lestrade was following their trail, hoping to see a clue in what had happened. But it came to me late in the night, there were places of safety for those seeking sanctuary from the law and the lawless."

"The thief-takers." George was growing aware of where Gregson was headed. "The kip's hiding someone, you're saying?"

"When I leant on the Abbott he practically gave me a full confession—practically. He confirmed they were keeping a person in safety, and that a Holly-man was operating as that person's delivery-man for goods-but he refused to give me the name of the refugee or the Holly-man." Gregson's colour was going up again. He was angry. "He said he couldn't give me names he didn't know, and wouldn't go any further than that."

"But you left!" George protested. "As soon as you had your back turned, the Abbott will just move the refugee to a new address!"

"I sent my best Bobbies out to put a moat around the entire kip. No one's going in or out for now. A blank warrant goes wonders for one's authority—real or imagined." Gregson explained with a coollness that left George open-mouthed with admiration. "I also put word out that a strange illness is centred at the kip. Couldn't hurt."

"You," George told him, "Possess the wisdom of the serpent."

"Thank you."

"But what's all this about the roads?"

"It was the one thing the Abbott could tell me. I asked for something to go on, and he said to look to St. Bonaventure."

George blinked. "The Saint of the Roads?"

"The same. So it all ties into the roads somehow, somewhere."

George was frowning at the empty white spaces on the map—untracted countryside. "So our man is somewhere between here and Sir Roland's estate."

"Yes. He gave us permission to create Lestrade's alibi as a holly-cutter." Gregson sniffed loudly.

"Sir Roland..." George said faintly.

Gregson eyed him sharp. "He's got a clean and proper record. He's the one who reported the missing men in the first place!"

"Yes...but what about his son?"

"Sir Roland's only heirs are a daughter and a wastrel nephew. Intelligence said he had no direct male heirs."

"Oh, well...that's if you only look at papers." George said darkly. A nasty smile twisted his lip. "Before he grew up and learnt respectability, he was _quite_ the lech. Got one of the serving-women in the family way and tossed her completely out if you believe the old women."

"We never heard a thing about that," Gregson protested, stung that his sources were scant.

"Had a boy-child, who had all of the bad of his father and none of the good—such as there is. And he in turn got another gel in the same family way. This child is a girl and rather an improved model on the family engine if you catch my meaning. I've never met her da outside derisive comments and snorts in the rougher inns, but she's an angel come to earth."

"An angel."

"Cross what's left of my blackened heart, it's true. I've met the child...well, she's full grown now, and pursuing a life in the Church. The wife and the other ladies put up their pennies to help her get into the schools when she announced she would take the veil."

"Interesting as this is..." Gregson pulled out a penny-fag and lit it carelessly by the little stove. "Your charwoman was paid to report visitors...you say that the station doesn't get visitors so much. What sorts do you get?"

George didn't mind Gregson's ignorance. Policemen learned to be savants in their field _within_ their territories. "Routine troubles. Petty theft, damage against property, poaching, dog-thieves from London take this route a bit; once in a while we get a wire from London Proper—a local boy gets in trouble and is trying to hurry home. The trouble could be anything from a brawl to cutting a throat." George sighed. "If we can beat them to the Main Crossroads, we've as good as got them." He started to chuckle, but froze solid. His brown eyes went round with horror.

"Bloody Hell, the Main Crossroards...that's on the stream-side of Sir Roland's orchards. But that doesn't make any sense. No one in their right mind would use his lands to hide from the law. He'd drive them out personally with the back of his hunting rifle...if they were lucky!"

"And if they weren't?" Gregson wondered.

"If they weren't, he'd use the front end first. The man's a holy terror. If you're on his lands, you have permission."

"We've heard worse from better criminal minds." Gregson said darkly. "Right. Are there any establishments alongside his territory that a...relative would be able to use to his own advantage?"

George was dazed with a growing horror. "A few. They're all less than an hour's walk from any of the waterways—old fenlands, drained tight. His forefathers turned it all into arable land but the old smithys, farriers and drinking-establishments are still right where they were left. They use the roads for business and make a decent living with it."

"Perhaps not so decent." Gregson growled. "Let's get the men you trust."

* * *

The barn door flew open on its cheap hinges with a swift kick. The tall man from the kip led the way, Toby slung over his shoulder like so many potatoes in a sack, hands tied in front of his chest. Toby hated the gag and guessed they hadn't understood Mr. Gregson's comment about a 'poor dumb boy'.

Mr. Lestrade wasn't tied up, but he was senseless from Tall Man's kick to the head. The two men dragging his weight were still swearing at their leader for his thoughtlessness. Twice they'd dropped him facedown into the snow to see if he was faking it, as if the snow getting rubbed inside his clothes wouldn't be enough to wake him up...but he never moved and they had to swear and grab his arms and drag him again.

Toby thought they were horrible men, but they weren't smart. It would have been easier to drag him on his back, feet-first. Toby knew that for a fact. He'd had to help drag frozen-victims off the street last Christmas. The money had been good and he'd learned a lot about pulling dead weight.

"Down."

Tall Man tossed Toby on his back into a hay-stuffed manger; Toby's legs fell off the lower side and he drew himself up tight in fear. Mr. Lestrade hit the floor-planks with a wet sound and again, did not move. Someone tossed Mr. Lestrade's bag behind him in the corner.

"Bloody hell." Someone whined.

"Tie'm up just in case."

Shorter Man did the work with heavy cord, grumbling the whole time. Shortest Man stood with his back against the wall, playing with a cheap little pocket knife with a shiny blade. When he saw Toby was staring at him he grinned. Toby was glad he couldn't see him all that well in the darkness.

"Get off your arse and get the Boss—and get that damned glue-pot in here!"

Shortest Man smirked and left as slowly as possible.

Tall Man took a drink from a bottle and spat in the corner.

The horse came in slowly, her eyes rolling with fear. She shook like a leaf but the the men yelled and hit her with sticks until she was a trembling wreck. Toby could have cried at how she cringed away from their blows and screams. At last they stuck her in the darkest corner and there she huddled, ears flat but too afraid to move.

Toby gulped hard around the tight gag; his jaw ached and he hurt all over from their rough hands. But Mr. Lestrade was still not moving.

"Stupid beast."

"We'll just shoot her too." A new voice said. "The knackers always got room."

Two more men can in with a fat, greasy man inside a dirty apron with a water-bucket swinging from his hand. Toby recognised the drunken tavern owner of yesterday. His eyes still burned hatefully and settled on the boy with a sneer. The door slammed shut with a clap; the bar settled and they were all locked inside.

"Don't you know how to wake a man up?" He scoffed. "No different than drink. Hair of the dog." And he dumped the bucket over Mr. Lestrade's head.

Mr. Lestrade finally stirred and coughed. As soon as he twitched he was hoisted up.

"Down to business." The tavern-keeper announced. He stank of malt. With a congested cough he grabbed the policeman by the back of the head and yanked his head up. "Where's the delivery, you little thief?"

"Deliv'ry?" Mr. Lestrade strangled. "All I've got is the holly, shir."

"We checked the cart. Nuffin." Someone grumbled.

"What about the bag?"

"Just scraps."

The tavern-keeper made a growling sound in his throat. "You've _got_ to be the one. Don't lie to me. The police were questioning you. Where's the box?"

"Box?" Lestrade stammered. "What box."

"Pikey, you lie." And the greasy fat man hit Mr. Lestrade across the face with a huge hand, once across the lip, dotting the grimy apron with blood, and once against the left eye. Toby saw his head snap back from the force. If he wasn't being held up, he would have fallen to the floor-planks.

Toby was terrified.

Lestrade held his breath as the pain stabilised. He hated black eyes almost as much as he hated broken noses—thank God they hadn't done that yet, but he didn't gull himself—they didn't have the patience to listen to their victim sniffle blood under interrogation. He pulled in his breath as the swelling moved over his eyelid.

"Oi, let the little one go. He's not worth your time."

"He's worth _your_ time, Pikey." A filthy face was shoved far too close to his own. Lestrade's good eye had too much of a view of pimples and stubble, and the rank of rotting teeth made him almost wish for a broken nose after all. "Don't think I don't recognise you, _Galvin_." He grinned, showing some of those teeth, and a tongue coated in white yeast from drink.

Lestrade's heart had forgotten how to work as soon as he'd heard "Don't think I don't recognise you," but with the use of his Tinker's name it started back up again, like a clumsy engine. They thought they knew who he was...they thought he was Galvin the Tinker.

But Galvin was an alias he had for the C.I.D. Where had any of these whoresons _been_ that they had noticed him? "Galvin" was a harmless Tinker who played carnivales and country faires. Maybe one in eight of his jobs were in London...

"I _know_ it's you. You ain't wearin' your blue, and you sure as hell ain't jugglin' balls, but I know a man's face when I see one." The tavernkeeper bragged as the others shifted their feet about the floor. "Saw you on the Green last year, heard you work for the coppers once in a while."

"It's dirty work but their money's clean enough for me." Lestrade shot back. He bled a little of the cant into his words, hoping he could keep up the pretense.

That made them laugh.

"I touched a ruddy knacker." Shorter Man rolled his eyes and shuddered in exaggeration. "I can't believe it...I've got my standards, I do!" That was met with more laughter, and someone yanked Lestrade back up to his feet, nearly taking his arm out of the socket. He gasped as his back hit the opposing wall.

"So you're out a-hollying, are yeh?" The keeper mused. "Wonder if that's all you're doing."

"Oh, let's just kill 'em and be done with it." A fifth voice suggested. Lestrade's eye was adjusting fast to the bad light of the barn, but the gaps in the wall-planks burned like white gas. Large, heavy lumps of men were taking shape. He could make out faces and features but was sure they couldn't see themselves nearly so well.

"Not the sibleen!" Lestrade protested and got a cuff in the jaw for his troubles. "He won't talk! He can't talk, he's a mute!"

"Well now isn't that just convenient." Someone marveled.

"Positively fortuitous." A second agreed. "No reason not to believe him, is there?"

"Why, I'd believe the good honest word of a Gipsy any day. Even on a Sunday."

"Now, there's no need to be doubtin'...all we have to do is make sure he's a mute..." A blade glittered in the cold beams of light. "Give him something to talk about..."

"Right you are." A dirty blond man agreed sweetly. "Easy enough."

Lestrade gulped hard, and wished he couldn't see Toby's face so clearly. "I don't want any trouble!" He protested. No trouble at all, granlum!"

"Well that's just too awful for you, because you've got trouble up to your Gipsy eyebrows." The tavernkeeper's voice had sunk to new depths, low and grumbling. "But unless you have something to add to this conversation, your troubles are about to come to an abrupt end."

Lestrade didn't have to fake nerves with his gulp. "I don't have a box," He said unsteadily. "Yet."

That made them pause.

The one with the knife out stopped swinging it back and forth in front of Toby's face.

"I was supposed to pick up a box and take it to St. John's with a password. That's all I know."

"Password." Someone breathed pure fury. "Bloody hell, no wo-"

The Tavernkeeper lifted his hand and all sound and motion halted in the barn.

Lestrade could hear his heart in his chest and the nervousness of the old nag at his back, but everything else was stone-silent.

"A password." The Tavern-keeper repeated very, very slowly. "You don't say."

"That's what I was told."

"Very well. Maybe you'd like to tell us what the password is, Gipsy?"

Lestrade glanced at Toby. "Will you let him go?" He couldn't outright demand the boy's release.

"Let him go?" The Tavernkeeper smiled coldly, but the others laughed as though Lestrade had given them the richest joke of their lives. "Why of course. We'll let him go." The smile dropped. "You've got no grounds, Pikey. Give us the Password and we won't kill him outright."

"All right." Lestrade took a deep breath. "But I don't want to say it where he can hear it."

The gang laughed, shifting their feet from side to side in their amusement. Even the tavernkeeper cracked a thin smile.

"He's dumb, not deaf!" Lestrade protested. "I don't want him to hear it!" They laughed harder.

"All right, gentlemen..." The tavern-keeper lifted both hands this time, but the others had hard straits keeping their hilarity to themselves, and it took almost a minute for the roars to die down.

"By all means, let us move to the far side, away from such tender ears as these..."

Toby didn't move a muscle. He kept himself as small as a frozen mouse as they pulled Mr. Lestrade until his back came up against the creaking wall. The nag made a worried sound but stayed where she was.

"The first part's easy." Lestrade began. "You can say whatever you want, make it look like you're having a regular talk with the man at the door. It's the second part's the password."

"Huh. Clever." Tall Man said reluctantly. "You didn't make that up I'm sure."

"No, sir, I didn't."

"Well then, let us have the second part." The tavernkeeper was ready.

Lestrade stopped and cleared his throat. He took a deep breath, hoping his better night-vision would get him through this.

"As likely as we are to start a war with a _**Prussian**_."

Lestrade's voice cut low and dark on the last word. He spat it out in British contempt. Bound helpless, Toby Irish was the only one to see how the old nag had suddenly pricked up her faded ears.

Over his head, the men were laughing at Lestrade.

"That's it?" Short man snorted.

"That's it." Lestrade's lip had opened and blood trickled down his bottom lip, but he was puffed up like a fighting cock. "I'd as soon as fight a _**Prussian**_."

Again with the word Prussian..?

Toby was still puzzling this when the old nag shuffled her stance and put out her hindquarters. Something, a prescience in the boy's brain, caused a prickle of fright and he flinched backwards away from that sensation, his bound hands clammy with fear.

The nag kicked out. Her right hoof burst the skull of the leader like an overripe melon. The boy could see the man's own hair fly across the barn in blood-anchored lumps through the air, even as the soulless corpse collapsed knees-first upon the loose planks of the barn floor.

The left hoof struck Tall Man square in the hausen-bane. A fountain of blood leaped from his open mouth, and the man fell back as a living man could not.

If Toby hadn't been gagged, he would have screamed. Silently, yes—but long and loud and at the top of his soundless lungs.


	11. Conclusion

"Lad...Toby...Lad..."

Lestrade was bending over him with a face as white as chalk where it wasn't plum-black with bruising. "Are you all right?"

Toby nodded that he was all right...and he hoped he wasn't lying. Mr. Lestrade had freed his hands somehow—oh. He had Short Man's pocket-knife. He held still as the Inspector used it to cut the knot at his wrists.

"Hold on... Try not to look, lad."

Toby didn't want to look. He pressed his cheek against the cold frame of the manger and squeezed his eyes shut. He could hear the sound of the rope sawing apart, twine after twine. Outside the horse was making happy noises. _Daft animal,_ Toby thought.

"There." The last snick of his knife was welcome in the boy's ears. "Sorry that took so long," he apologised. Toby understood. He took his freed hands to his face and rubbed his jaw with a wince.

"Are you hurt?" The man gripped his shoulder.

Toby lifted his eyebrows and took in the bloody mess that was his rescuer.

"Most of it isn't mine." Mr. Lestrade read his expression correctly. "Well. I think so." But he sounded skeptical to his own ears and sighed. "Let's get you up." He ran the edge of the blade through the heavy rope at his ankles and it was Toby's turn to sigh. Together they got him up, but Mr. Lestrade stumbled and clenched his teeth together with a hiss of pain.

"I'll be fine." He vowed to an increasingly doubtful Toby Irish. "At least, as soon as we get out of here."

Toby pointed outside where the nag was eating.

"She won't get anywhere near me." He was told. "I'm covered in blood."

And a few things that weren't blood. Toby really didn't want to think of that or look at it, but he could only imagine how awful it must feel to be Mr. Lestrade right now.

"Here..." Mr. Lestrade found horse blankets, and threw one over the boy. "See if you can put one over the girl, would you?"

Toby did as he was told, relishing the feel of movement again. He was sore from tip to toe, but he was glad to be free.

Mr. Lestrade had found a hoe-handle against the wall and used it as a walking stick. He managed to get to the heavy gripsack the gang had tossed in the corner and knelt very slowly. Toby shivered and stamped his feet free of snow as quietly as possible. When Mr. Lestrade pulled out a wicked-looking gun, the boy shouted in mute surprise.

"Good thing they didn't find it, eh?" Mr. Lestrade's voice was grim beneath his blood-clad face.

Toby gulped and nodded. If he wasn't already dumb, he would be from the shock. Policemen didn't carry weapons.

"I may yet need it." Mr Lestrade's eyes were black with anger as he took in the sleeping tavern. "Good thing they like their drink in there." He said softly. "We're going to cut over the field, and keep the barn between us and the tavern. It means going through snow, and I'm still blind in the light, but you can help guide me. The road's on the other side of the slope, and _we're going to hit it as soon as we can."_ He took a deep breath. "This is a rotten plan, Master Irish. But I can hardly storm the tavern with my eyes being the way they are right now and I'm not having you be my eyes for me! Just signal me if you see anyone coming our way."

Toby had to agree. At least the tavernkeeper was one of the dead men. Any guests under that miserable roof were probably other killers like himself.

He took a deep breath, and slowly smiled. They could do this.

* * *

"Bloody hell, what the _devil_ is the matter with you?"

"I..."

Toby opened his eyes. He was warm and cozy inside a large woollen blanket and moving felt like a bad idea. Mr. Lestrade had his left arm in a sling and his eye was still black with blood but he was somewhat cleaner and standing (thanks to a borrowed walking-stick) up to the much-taller Mr. Gregson.

Mr. Gregson did not look well. His pale face was pink as a rose and that made his yellow hair stand out as more yellow.

"You're telling me that walking glue-pot killed six killers—an entire gang?"

"I doubt that's the entire gang, Gregson. They had to have so-"

"I'm not finished!" Gregson continued to shout. "That glue-pot, that..._that Rockerfeller biltong_...you took a war nag with you, and she cut her lucky, and you and the urk managed to survive?"

"Toby wasn't in danger from that horse." Lestrade said firmly. "He was safe in the hay-cratch. And I ducked down as soon as she started kicking."

Gregson was fighting for breath. His face was darkening to a cherry-red. Toby had never seen this look on the big copper before, and stared in fascination. "You," he said at last, "are just lucky that she remembered her master's old password."

"Don't I know it!" Lestrade responded fervently. "Don't I know it, Gregson! I thought he was addled for even telling me that old trick. They lost their heads when she started swinging. Poor beast."

"Poor beast my eye. She's saved the Courts a great deal of money..." Gregson puffed and held up a cup of tea. "Much as I'd like to have the satisfaction of hanging every man-jack. They've found more bodies beneath the floor of that barn, Lestrade. D'you want to hear the story behind that?"

"Dear Lord, no, but you'll tell me anyway, eh?" Lestrade cringed at the warm steam touching his beaten face. He sipped delicately and hoped the pain would die down soon. He needed tea as badly as he needed to breathe...even _Gregson's_ tea.

"Don't get your hopes up. It isn't that grand of a story." Gregson warned him. "The innkeeper's father started the custom—oh, that can wait till later. The fact is they couldn't add the Holly-Men to the collection until the weather warmed up.

"All this for smuggling bits and bobs to a woman in hiding."

"People do more for women who aren't in hiding. And you have to admit, Sir Roland's family makes enemies in permanent ways."

"Did they find out what these thugs were hoping to find?"

"Property they claim was rightfully theirs."

"Rightfully stolen, in other words."

"Hah. I daresay what's left of the gang will disperse once we get the bracelets on Sir Roland's son. He's the source of all their anger."

"And charge him with what?"

"If I have to, I'll charge him with keeping bad company. As far as that crowd goes, it was a criminal offense." Gregson sniped. He was calmer but that wasn't actually good. Gregson was less dangerous to others when he was sputtering angry.

"What then?" Lestrade hesitated to ask. "This case is all over the map. Maps. Who has the bloody jurisdiction?"

"Hanged if I know. We'll leave it to the areas in which we were entrusted. I'll even be so kind as to let the RP know the bits those bastards violated."

"So long as we don't include the horse in this."

"We might be able to get that bag of bones to her master with very little attention on part of the newspapers."

"I hope so." Lestrade leaned forward on his stick. "She doesn't deserve it. They'd demand her death as a dangerous animal."

"You're saying she isn't dangerous?"

"Only when she isn't given the command to fight."

"You were lucky beyond belief." Mr. Gregson sounded as if he were speaking to a well-meaning but dim child. "Of all the horses you could be loaned in London, you were given the one horse that hates Prussians as much as you."

If Gregson had slapped Lestrade, the reaction would have been milder. The two men stared at each other, white-faced with anger and the dawning realisation that too much had been said. Toby vowed not to move, but two heads turned at the same time to skewer him through the heart.

Toby sank deeper into the blanket.

"Toby." Mr. Gregson moved first, and Mr. Lestrade fled.

"Here you are, lad." The gruff voice of the big man tried to gentle as he helped the boy sit up, but Gregson wasn't good at being gentle. He quickly gave it up as useless and just slipped a pillow under his back. A cup of tea was produced and Toby drank it down. "All right now, are we?" He coughed. "Any aches and pains on your person?"

Toby shook his head no, but his eyes were still on the empty doorway.

"He won't be back for a while." Gregson grumbled. "Man's a decent enough policeman, but he doesn't like to hear some things." He sounded as though he wanted to convince himself of something. Toby looked at the big man's face for clues. Mr. Gregson released his breath in a long sigh. "Mr. Lestrade doesn't like to hear any mention of Prussians." He said at last. "He lost kinfolk in the War."

Mr. Lestrade was French? Toby was baffled. He didn't look French. Or sound French.

Gregson suddenly grinned, divining Toby's thoughts. "You'll have fun learning about the different peoples of London, Master Irish." He pulled out a half-smoked fag and Toby took it happily. They shared it together, man and boy—the hard-taught child easily holding the man's vile smoke in his lungs. For a few minutes they smoked in companionable silence. Toby often used smoking to stifle his hunger. Gregson sat on the edge of the cheap drunkard's cot and passed him every other puff of smoke until the tiny room was fogged up.

"If you're going to get ahead in the world, my lad, you'd best find something your friends don't have. You're curious and that's already something most men and women will never own. But you need to know what to do with your curiosity. Names are important anywhere in the world, but never moreso than on this island. Names and appearances judge a man for life.

"We are a great empire, I believe, but no matter how great the giant, his heart's still only a small portion of his body. England is the heart of the empire, and London is the heart of England. We are surrounded by a world's worth of friends and foes and both keep changing sides with each other.

"You've met people from all over the earth just by living in London, Mr. Toby. Maybe all you've done is see them with your eyes but they're there. You're a man now and it's time you learned more about the people with which you share our city.

"I'm a Gregson and my people have been here a long, long time. We cut metal and wooden sculpture for the wealthiest families in our heydays...I've got distant cousins who are still in the Guilds, men _and_ a few women. I've never seen them. Me, I was lucky enough that I could choose what I wanted to do with my life. Didn't quite have the right patrons to go into law, so I went to law enforcement. It was the right fit for me. I'm a bit of the black sheep, but as my old granny would say, 'a black sheep is still in the flock.'" He chuckled, pleased with the old lady's advice, and Toby smiled.

"Did you know," Mr. Gregson said almost too casually, "I'm part Greek?"

Toby's eyes went wide. He stared at the big, tow-headed man who looked as unlike one of the fishermen off the Estuary as anyone he could imagine. He could believe Mr. Lestrade was French against the effort of putting Gregson in with short, bronzed and curly-headed seamen.

"It's true." Mr. Gregson smirked at his disbelief. "The Gregsons have been here since before the Norman Invasion...legend has it we helped carve up the Durham cathedrals and chapels. Wouldn't be surprised. Some of those carved up saints look an awful lot like some of my family...would've been just like them to pull a trick like that..." he paused for another smirk. "But my great-grandmother was Greek and it's from her I got my view of the world. For better of for worse, I see London as how she really is: A gem that needs protecting and polishing in equal measure." He handed the dwindling fag back to Toby. The boy took a glad puff.

"It was from her that I have my fair hair. She liked to say Theseus had yellow hair like me. The point I'm making is this. _Never assume or judge people completely on how they look and act._ Mr. Lestrade's a runty little Gaul and it's true, and the fact that he looks full Black Country Welsh is the same point I'm making about myself. You wouldn't think he had a drop of Frog in him any more than you'd think I have Greek, would you?"

Toby shook his head no, with such violence that he hurt his head. Gregson laughed out loud at his expression.

"He and I are both judged by our appearances. For better or for worse that's how the world runs. Mr. Lestrade is tapped to be the CID's street rough because the public _wants_ to believe a small, dark and frankly _quite ugly_ little man is just as disreputable on the inside as he is on the outside."

"And as for Mr. Gregson," Mr. Lestrade's scathing voice sliced in, "Is judged by his appearance to have more meat than muscle between his ears, because they think someone as big and fat as himself never had to use his brains for anything but to hold his skull together."

Toby blinked. Mr. Lestrade had returned as if by magic, and was standing on one foot, the other drawn up against the wall with his arms awkwardly folded over his chest. He still looked a fright.

"It helps if you can bend iron nails with your fingers. Want one?" Gregson primly extended the remnants of his cigarette.

"No, thank you. I'd like to live to see the next Coronation." He delicately manoeuvred a finely-made cigarillo between his fingers and pridefully struck his own light from a little box in his pocket. Gregson grinned at him, amused that he would waste the price of a Vesta on vanity.

"We take how people see us and use it to our own advantage. It's a fine line we walk, but if you're under-estimated you have a better chance of winning. What do people see when they see you, Toby Irish?" Mr. Gregson had grown serious. "They see you as the guttersnipe son of a man who helped his fellow man whenever he could, and poor though he might be, he wasn't _poorly_. He had his pride and he looked any man straight in the eye as he talked. He did what he could to feed his family, even though he was only good at the only thing he knew how to do."

And that was poaching. Toby looked down, his cheeks burning with an old shame. His father poached; his uncle made loaded dice and rigged games. The Irish family meant little in their own eyes and even less in the eyes of the neighbors.

"He was a fine poacher because he had eyes and ears." Mr. Lestrade said in a more gentle voice. "He helped us out, and his help was finest kind. What he did for a living, lad, had nothing to do with his personal honour."

"You're confusing the boy, Lestrade."

"He's too smart to be confused for long. Look at him. You can see the clock-spring winding up behind his eyes."

"Huh." Gregson fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a tiny pipe. "The point Lestrade's trying so badly to make-" (Mr. Lestrade snorted as loudly as the old nag) "-is that your father did good work for us, and we were wondering if you'd like to work with us too."

After what had happened?

Toby looked from man to man, but they were serious.

Lestrade finally smiled, which was a ghastly sight against his bruised and cut-up face. "You aren't the reason why the case went badly, Toby. Mr. Gregson found us because the Bobbies found your tracks in the snow first. It was a simple matter to trail us to the barn and from there to the orchards."

"The snow is the only reason why the case went bad at all." Gregson said firmly. "It would have been a neat 'un were it not for the Stormy Hand of God."

"You're perfect for the kind of work we need." Lestrade smoked easily through one side of his face. "You're dumb so people will think you're daft too. And don't pretend that you don't act stupid to get what you want when you're begging on the street!" He chuckled as Toby ducked his head down, bashfully hiding a grin.

"What worries me is that people who pretend to be stupid long enough can turn stupid for real." Gregson wagged a finger in Toby's face. "If that happens to you I'll be most upset."

"And you don't want Gregson upset." Lestrade told him. "He gets fussy."

Gregson blew through his nose at Lestrade.

Toby let his feet touch the floor. He had made up his mind quickly, but that was his nature. In a neat return of their earlier pact, the boy offered his hand to shake with the two men.

* * *

Toby Irish went home with the following:

a wreath of berried holly

a garland of ivy

a sprig for the Christmas pudding

a handful of money, and

balances paid for the family's goose club, plum pudding club, and coal purchase.

Going by the tiny shrieks and hurrahs when he unlocked the front door, his little sisters were happy to see him.

The Inspectors waited until the door was safely shut before they began the long, slow walk to their respective homes. It would be especially long and slow for Lestrade, who needed his walking-stick. Gregson was not relishing the walk either; the cold had settled in his bones and every step ached all the way up his back.

Around them, London swarmed in a living tapestry of sight, sound and colour. This time of evening the children were the majority of the population. The men didn't let on that they were cheered at the sight of the small ones gadding about in a desperate attempt to wring an extra hour of play out of the clock.

"That went well, considering."

"Huh." Lestrade grunted. He was exhausted. His arm hurt like the devil so he kept the sling cradled close to his chest. "I feel sullied."

"How do you think I feel? His father died on my case!" Gregson snarled.

"I'm not talking about that." Lestrade lifted his good arm. "I'm talking about why we _have_ to recruit him." The small man turned on his heel and shakily looked up into the pale blue eyes of the big man. "You know how many people watched him while we were hollying-up the streets of London?" He didn't wait for an answer. "Plenty. And they were _all_ faces you'd recognise from his uncle's crowd."

"Winnie should be the one dead, not Partridge." Gregson said the truth unnecessarily. "But here we are."

Lestrade was uncharacteristically silent.

"Well, Lestrade? Nothing cute to say about my creating a child-informer?"

"If there's another choice, I don't see it." Lestrade stopped to rub at his aching eyes; Gregson tensed and breathed relief when a passing cab just missed his arm.

"Lestrade...Try walking closer to the walls until that brew wears off."

"Amusing you are." Lestrade said without heat. "Look, what do you want me to say? The whole family dances a high-wire between the law and lawless. As long as his Tad lived, Toby chanced turning out like him if not better. But with Winnie being the man of the house now? God help us! Toby'll turn out better in crime or worse as a man because of his example!If Toby _doesn't_ find his own way of making money for his family, his uncle _will_ recruit him, and the lad'll feel honour-bound to do as his uncle says. But even Winnie won't interfere if he's bringing in decent wages on his deliveries—not to mention it will remind everyone why he needs to keep up his letters! He has to use reading and writing for communicating with the outside world!"

The two men fell silent as they walked. A freakish wind was trying to melt the snow and every foot-step was a trial to the balance as much as the warming air was a trial to the nose. They made it to the edge of a little park with no little gratitude.

"Happy Christmas." Lestrade said at last.

"Same to you." Gregson answered grudgingly.


End file.
